Techiebytes

Have you ever “accidentally” done an inappropriate web search? Perhaps you found something via search a week ago and would like to revisit it on another machine. Either way, if you’re a Google user your web history is part of your account. I was wondering about figuring out what Google actually knows about me and found poof I realized that every search I’ve done since 2007 was archived.

For me this isn’t a good thing. This level of monitoring makes me a bit uncomfortable. I also started digging into what other information Google might have collected about me. While I know I shouldn’t be surprised I was, simply visiting Google Dashboard yielded information on accounts so old I’d simply forgotten them. Just like Facebook, my Google credentials has access to several other applications, and several applications had access to my Google account.

Still beyond all of this, the Web Search history was the most concerning. I found myself revisiting my Search History repeatedly questioning if I should delete it or not. All my searches are explainable (even if I shouldn’t have to explain them), but even more concerning is that it tracks all the links I’ve clicked. An index of this much information just doesn’t seem necessary, and honestly the risk of someone knowing my browsing habits is higher than I’d like to admit.

While I left the data intact, I do feel violated. It reminds me that nothing is actually free, and when you use a service you’re not paying for you’re most definitely not the customer. With all of Google’s recent changes (most not good IMHO) I question if I should continue to trust them with all of this data.

Tell me what you think. Visit your Google Dashboard. Did you find things you didn’t know about? Are your comfortable with the data being tracked?

Google Dashboard - https://www.google.com/dashboard/

Filed under: Security, Technology Tagged: | Acocunt, Apps, Google, History, Privacy, Search engines