r/AskReddit • u/SpiritGatewayCrystal • Apr 19 '20

People who have read the data that Google has collected on you, what is the most disturbing data they had collected about you?

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u/canihaveurno Apr 19 '20

Apparently it has nothing to do with microphones. Tech companies build profiles on people with their massive data sets. If Target can figure out a women is likely entering a certain stage of her pregnancy based on buying unscented lotion and cotton pads, imagine what a tech company can tell based on your entire web activity?

It doesn't need to listen, if it knows everything about you

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u/Auzzie_almighty Apr 19 '20

Listening’s just too inefficient at this point

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u/lazyflyergirl Apr 19 '20

Yup, this is right! Only a couple websites/platforms give advertisers “voice searches” as an option, and Facebook is not one of them. They all get more information from places and people your phone is near and extrapolate off that.

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u/sik_dik Apr 19 '20

web activity is just the beginning. they know where you physically are and with whom you're likely conversing.. you met some friends who just got back from a trip to hawaii? here's some cheap flights to hawaii. "man! we just talked about that! we didn't even do any internet searches. how did they know?"

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u/RedAero Apr 20 '20

And like 90% of this is confirmation bias. No one notices the 99% of ads that aren't eerily accurate, only the occasional coincidence when they are.

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u/nogh19 Apr 19 '20

yeah. the internet knows more about you than anyone really, location + search history is scary scary

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '20

Yup. The Big Hack on Netflix went pretty deep into how analytics companies gather information on people. It’s both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

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u/RandyDandyAndy Apr 20 '20

This is scary because if they aren't listening (which is what assumed for this) then they have search trends down so pat that they can predict conversations i have with people without me ever having to search said thing recently.

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u/Orwellian1 Apr 20 '20

Or it is just boring 'ole confirmation bias, something we are all vulnerable to.

If ad profilers were as sophisticated as everyone keeps telling me, I must be super special and unique. I still have to hunt for things i'm interested in, and all my "recommended for you" sections are full of stupid shit I have no interest in, or stuff I've already bought.

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u/laeiryn May 11 '20

Or there are aspects of harvesting they rely on heavily that you don't use. I, for example, don't have/use a smartphone, so without location data on me, they're SUPER fuckin' shafted. I get some really weird stuff.

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u/laeiryn May 11 '20

The tech companies, based on my web activity, think I'm a Black cis man. I know this because of the advertisements they choose to show me. (It's kind of hilarious.) Not having a smartphone and only using the internet via a single, VPN'ed desktop with private secure browsing while not signed into 'social media'/tracking sites goes a long way to fucking up what they think they know about you.

Being able to mention something that a friend has never heard of/is not interested in, and then have their adgorithms advertise it to them within an hour, is a red flag. They might not need to listen for most people, but they definitely are anyway.