YSK: Google tracks your app usage and so much more
YSK: Google tracks your app usage and so much more
Why YSK: Because you deserve to have peace of mind. Your privacy can mean your safety. I found out about this today, and in this comment I mentioned it and said I would make something more detailed.
I bet you heard that Google tracks you, as have I. But it's insanely daunting to see every movement, app and thing you have interacted with on your device for the last 8 years just laid out in front of you neatly. When you add your google account on your phone(or any device), it tracks this, with a timestamp, including:
-any app you used(including Contacts, Calendar, Phone, and when you pressed your home screen button-it is regarded as Samsung UI Home etc.)
-apps you viewed on google play
-map area on maps(you don't even have to search a specific place in order for it to get logged)
-if you called a place from maps(if you press the call button from maps to call a place and make a reservation, for example)
-images you saw and searched for on your browser
-location, video and voice notes and more
It is mentioned that if you log in on another device, it can keep track of this on that device as well.
#What can you do?
The first thing you can do is turn it off. Log on your google account, press the icon on the top right, then press on "Manage your Google Account". On the left side you will see a panel, choose "Data and privacy", and scroll on the center of the screen to see History settings, and press on My activity. You can choose to turn it off if you want. Make sure to stroll around to manage your advertisement settings, location settings, subscriptions and so on.
I also recommend switch to Proton Mail if you can.
#How I found out?
Recently, as you probably know, Youtube decided to be foolish(yes, more than usual) and force its users to either consume ads or buy Premium, blocking you after three viewed videos if you use any form of ad block. I said ew, no. Let's use yt clients that don't scrape your data and allow you to have privacy and no ads, it's about time I jump ship.
I didn't want to have to manage every subscription and videos in playlists manually(it would take days). I wanted something for my desktop, and I stumbled upon FreeTube. They have a guide that tells you how to export subscriptions and videos, the whole thing.
Following the instructions, I inevitably stumbled upon my managed data. It's a weird feeling seeing all that was. I vaguely remember how I felt in those years, but I never thought I would see what I was doing or what app I was using then. Inevitably we forget some trivial things in our lives, but this is what gets to be remembered, and this is the proof that we existed. It's strange.
Ending note: I assume most people here probably already know this, but I just wanted to pass this along for awareness purposes. I knew that I wanted to have random stats at the end of my life to like, review and read, but not like this.
Turning off your history in Google is about as useful as using the incognito mode in Chrome. It just hides it from you, but you can be sure Google is keeping their own copy. Don't use Chrome, gmail, Google docs.... Use custom ungoogled roms (GrapheneOS, LineageOS). Switch to Linux, use privacy friendly dns, or even your own... The path to privacy is a long and arduous constant fight, full of inconveniences.
58My moment of realization was when gdpr was introduced and I pulled all data Facebook had on me. Found call logs, every picture I had, sms conversations etc from my Sony Ericsson phone and all of my android phones. They scraped everything of every phone I ever owned and used Facebook on. Some sms conversations were from when I was 10 years old. Very strange feeling and that made me delete Facebook and over time move away from big tech in general.
19I use a couple of counter measures and I am quite happy since years and hope to be as invisible as possible for tracking companies. I have a samsung phone, this is what I did:
- on your pc install adb
- when switching on the phone for the first time, dont connect to wifi, dont make or use a google account, press skip and all the fake "warnings" until you see your launcher
- download a browser apk of your liking and install it via browser
- activate developer mode for apk (you find the instructions online)
- via command line remove all samsung bloatware
- uninstall all google apps except the absolute must haves like "google play service" and so on
- go into settings - apps in your phone and deactivate all remaining google apps that you dont dare to delete via adb
- install an alternate app store via your newly installed browser
- install wireguard and setup connection to your vpn at home
- on my homeserver install pihole or adguard home to block google out completely
- set a different search engine like qwant or so in your browser
- install all the security add ins in your browser to your liking
As a result, I am almost google free, except probably for samsungs trackers. Sometimes apps or commerce websites dont work as they use google captcha or things like that.
16How cN I get a copy to see ally data? While it certainly is creepy, I want to just see everything I have forgotten. So many things I've looked up and can't remember when I went to find it again I couldn't remember but I couldn't just ask my computer. I consigned myself to knowing they were probably doing this when I bought a Pixel 2 so long ago.
9Yes and I will add to this... Just degoogle your phone and slowly stop using Google services. Even this is not a perfect solution but its better than doing nothing.
7For even more counter-measures, going to plug privacyguides.org, as well as the lemmy community (and instance) that is run by the owner of the site, !privacyguides@lemmy.one
5It's become very apparent that all their creepy tracking hasn't even improved their advertising, and clearly not their AI. So wtf is their data hoarding even going to if they aren't improving from any of it?
4I wish Apple was transparent enough to have a real comparison of their privacy.
Personal guess, Apple is generating just as much personal data, just using it less offensively than Google. That's not good but it's betterish, I guess.
Main things I'm stuck using Google for at the moment are Gmail and Maps. Gmail, because my address I've had over there since Gmail was invite only. Maps, because they are one of the only decent sources for restraunt reviews these days (why did Zomato have to kill UrbanSpoon :( )
4Or if you are able to degoogling Is possible
2I discovered google had recorded all the hashtags I had visited on mastodon. I thought I had turned off this recording, but there were additional categories which I think they have added since the last time I was there.
Of course the UK government and ISP record everything too, by URL, so that includes hashtags, even this post has a unique URL.
2I have been very happy with my new email provider, with all the info being sent to my inbox now I didn’t want Google seeing it all before me. (mailbox.org is who I went with for the curious )
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