What does Google know about me?

Whenever you use a Google app, you agree to their terms of service. Every single Google ToS tells you that they collect personal in­form­a­tion. This includes search history, websites visited in Chrome, GPS location on Google Maps, IP address in­form­a­tion, and much more.

Data col­lec­tion and security in the age of Google

There’s a saying: ‘If something is free online, you’re the real product’.

What could be so special about you that Google is willing to run awesome services like YouTube, Gmail, Docs, and Search without ever charging you? Your personal in­form­a­tion. You become their product as they serve targeted ad­vert­ising to you based on every breath you take and every move you make.

How deep do they dive to serve relevant ads? One look at the Google Ad Services console should tell you most of the story. At minimum, they combine your age, location, search trends, and travel habits to place accurate ads. But if you use a bunch of their services, have an Android phone, and aren’t using any kind of proxy, they have so much more at their disposal.

Which data is Google allowed to collect?

Google data security and usage policies tells you the non-an­onymised data that the company collects. This is important because their pseudo-an­onymised data is so much more insidious.

Sure, you can lie about who you are, but you can’t com­pletely dodge the ob­lig­a­tion to provide personal data. Whether or not you log in, at some point you have to agree to the Google Search privacy policy and ToS. If you do create a Google account and log in, you agree to all that and willingly provide a bunch of personal data.

The non-an­onymised in­form­a­tion that Google collects includes:

• Usage data for Google services and apps
• Telephone number
• Credit card details
• Email address
• Searches
• Photos
• Calendar entries
• Contacts

Google also collects a range of end device data like IP address, info on the make and model you’re browsing on, and SIM card numbers. VPN service are a good way to avoid them knowing your IP address.

What data does Google collect an­onym­ously?

To really answer the question of ‘what does Google know about me’, we need to dig deeper. Non-an­onymised data doesn’t even come close to their total knowledge. In fact, most of the data they collect from you is either an­onymised or semi-an­onymised.

How? By analysing your device, network, and browser para­met­ers, Google performs a kind of browser fin­ger­print­ing on you. What that means is that even if you use a VPN service, and even if you lie about your identity, they simply assign a number to you and track your habits. 95% of people who have scripting turned on can be tracked in this way. Some methods include:

Canvas testing: The website opens an invisible canvas that appears behind your browser window, and de­term­ines draw speed, browser di­men­sions, menu bars, colour depth, browser version, OS version, fonts, and more.

Sound testing: Using brief tones above or below human hearing, a test is run that also pulls up your audio pref­er­ences. This de­term­ines your audio drivers, sound card, mi­cro­phone and headphone cap­ab­il­ity, your preferred formats for A/V playback, and more.

Helper app testing: Any apps that are linked to the browser and are script-ac­cess­ible, which would be most addons and resident firmware programs, are queried. This results in a partial or full plugin list, time zone, geo­loca­tion settings, battery status (or the lack of a battery), keyboard layout, and more.

The com­bin­a­tion of all these stat­ist­ics, taken over time, will render most people unique. Google doesn’t need your name at that point. They have your number, and they can serve in­cred­ibly per­son­al­ised ads without ever needing your photo ID or address. All it takes is any cor­rel­a­tion (social media posts, business in­form­a­tion, etc.), and they could easily correlate your real-life data with that generated ID number.

Can you stop this? Yes, but there are only two highly effective ways at the moment.

1. You can turn off scripting (which breaks most websites and apps on the internet), never use public WIFI, always use Tor Onion browsing (far slower than normal, as it needs to pass through three extra nodes), and use an ad blocker.
2. Or you can use a cloud or other virtual machine to remotely open a browser and stream the browsing results back to your client. This sets up an in­form­a­tion gap between you and ad­vert­isers. All they get is the browser and virtual hardware stat­ist­ics of a generic Linux machine that randomly shifts certain at­trib­utes every time. Over the long term, your profile will be com­pletely amorphous. It’s like trying to tackle water.

These options are either painful or highly technical. Third party services that provide streaming virtual browsers are still in de­vel­op­ment (the most promising recent entry being Hoody, but they’re still pre-launch).

According to Google, they use the data to improve user ex­per­i­ence by resizing websites, changing sound options, and the like. But their new ad­vert­ising model in the wake of phasing out third-party cookies says dif­fer­ently.

Google’s new ad platform for 2023 is something called Topics API. They refused to adapt to most of the industry’s privacy concerns. Big ad­vert­isers will have a browser fin­ger­print­ing advantage over smaller ones. These are all things that the former version of the project, FLOC, was supposed to address. But it was scrapped in favour of Topics, and now there’s no going back.

How do I find out what Google knows about me?

In your Google Account dashboard, you can see what is being collected non-an­onym­ously in the Data & privacy section.

In­di­vidu­al Google apps and services collect differing amounts of in­form­a­tion. The privacy settings on each can be used to reduce this to a minimum, but never below what is stated in the ToS.

What data does Google stores via its browser

Chrome stores all your search queries and website history in the browser if you’re logged in and not in Incognito mode. With Device Sync enabled, your open tabs can be shared across devices.

Viewing your Google Chrome browser history:

1. To view your Chrome browser history, click the three dots to the right next to the search field.
2. Select ‘History’. This displays a list of your search queries.
3. Another click on ‘History’ shows the full overview. You can view it using the key com­bin­a­tion [Ctrl] + [H].

4. You can also view ‘Tabs from other devices’ to view the Chrome browsing history of your smart­phone, for example.

Manage your settings in Google Dashboard

The Google dashboard lets you view accounts, account services and change the settings to fit your pref­er­ences.

How to block col­lec­tion of data

Here are a few ways to restrict Google from col­lec­tion your history and browser data:

• Adjust your browser settings from your account if you use Chrome.
• Use Firefox instead of Chrome.
• Use Google al­tern­at­ives to search online.
• Switch off location tracking in Google Maps.
• Use al­tern­at­ive services such as Lib­reOf­fice or Open­Of­fice instead of Google Docs.

If you use Google services, you’re paying with your data

Google’s services are wonderful. They benefit from decades of per­fect­ing the user ex­per­i­ence. Large portions of the world simply don’t function without Google Search and Android OS.

The cost of this is giving them copious amounts of user data. And browser fin­ger­print­ing under the new Topics API is going to make that col­lec­tion even more complete.

If you want to reduce the data Google collects about you, adjust the settings in each Google service and app. They’ll still collect core data, however. If that disturbs you, stop using their services and OS.