I wish to convince my friends and family to avoid using privacy-invading ad-based services and apps. Seeing people discuss how much data these companies collect off of us, I want to know if there is a way you could get a sample of that data by yourself and show it to them for them to realize the gravity of the situation themselves.
The closest thing is Google’s ad personalization panel in the Google Account Dashboard. It literally lists out the information of the account holder by the things they’ve browsed, including their gender, age, occupation, interests etc. I could’ve used it to show to my family but I turned off ad personalization for all their accounts a few years back so they aren’t even aware of it.
The next closest thing to this could be browser fingerprinting tests but they wouldn’t be able to understand the tech jargon from the results anyway. Also I am not planning to go to the ‘deep web’ for this. Is there any other way I could get this done, like a website/app specifically designated for this purpose, for opening some sort of userlog in the accounts page?
Show them exactly what the company says the collect in plane language not legalese.
Haha plane language. Like whats up my Airbus?
Not much my Cessna.
Comac C919 here, what is this “Privacy” you speak of ?
I guess not everyone can be an SR-71. I’ll give you a transcript of everything they’ve been saying for the past 9 hours, hopefully it should bring you up to speed.
But at least with plane language it’s not Boeing anymore.
That’s a nice web to check. Thanks
Have them open Google maps if they use it and show them the timeline. That usually freaks people out a bit. Then you can say sites are doing this same tracking with their digital information or something.
Show them the consequeces. You might scare a few people who are already anxious by showing data collected, but most people will be apathetic. Illustrate why its bad. Be systemic about it.
The stunt outlined elsewhere of texting someone with their info is good, but “we all know google isn’t going to threaten us” is the prevailing attitude. Demonstrate what google is going to do and how it hurts people individualy and directly. Until there are personal consequences, peopae won’t really care.
Removed by mod
Coming from an outsider, could you give an example of a way Google attacks people individually and directly?
Preferably something more common than traffic accidents, since people drive cars regardless
Imagine that you buy a phone from Google’s Google Fi MVNO cellular service. You order a phone and it’s to be delivered. The phone was part of a promotion for signing up. You paid a reduced rate for it because you are a new customer. Then the phone is stolen out of the package while in the custody of the shipping company. You make a complaint to Google because the phone never arrived and you can’t activate service and fullfill your end of the bargain without it. They say that it’s the responsibility of the shipper. You then make a complaint with the shipper who claims that although they may be at fault (not likely that they admit that), they are not on the hook for reimbursement. That you must contact Google. You go back to Google. They “escalate” your case to the next tier of customer support. You wait months. They charge you the full cost of the phone even though you never received it. They do this because per the terms of your agreement with them you did not activate service with the phone and maintain that service for the specified period of time and within a specified time limit. You contact your credit card company. They offer you the option of doing a charge back.
Google doesn’t like that you charged back. Now your entire personal and professional google accounts and anything linked to them are gone. They nuked them. There is no customer service to contact to review what’s happened. You can’t get into company email. You can’t get into private email. You can’t get 2fa codes sent to you via email for any of your bank or other web based accounts linked to that email. Anything and everything in Google drive? Gone. Your family photos? Gone. If you use an android phone you are no longer logged into a Google account rendering your phone only partially functional. They can’t serve you with personalised ads anymore. But on the other hand you also have no recourse other than hiring a lawyer (which may be exceptionally cost prohibitive) to get revenge porn of you removed from Google search results in compliance with right to be forgotten laws and anti-revenge porn laws. Meanwhile your data still allows them to target other people you interact with. They get ads for things like the same toothpaste that was on your shopping list in Google Keep. Movies you like. Shows you’ve purchased. That data you gave them free and clear can still be used by other people and agencies to track you. Your employment history. Your rental history. Whether you’ve ever been evicted.
They won’t sell it. But they’ll still use it. And you will have less avenues to delete it or otherwise change it.
What an imagination you have there. Wow.
Google actually has been caught nuking accounts that have done charge backs. Could you make a new account? Yeah. Maybe. But would you?
Google scans all the photos you upload or send to other users, multiple times they have accused people of uploading CSAM and completely nuked their accounts simply because they were sending something to their pediatrician or their doctor.
In one case they have reported them to the police who then obtained a search warrant for all the (obscene amount of) data that google has collected on them.
They then disabled and deleted all his google related accounts including his phone number (he used google fi)
In December 2021, Mark received a manila envelope in the mail from the San Francisco Police Department. It contained a letter informing him that he had been investigated as well as copies of the search warrants served on Google and his internet service provider. An investigator, whose contact information was provided, had asked for everything in Mark’s Google account: his internet searches, his location history, his messages and any document, photo and video he’d stored with the company
Louis rossman has a video on those incidents on youtube.
Google could have potentially and very easily destroyed this persons life. With them you are guilty until proven innocent, actually your always guilty. This mark guy sent the police report that exonerated him to google, yet they still think he’s a pedo…
This is a “simple” question, but unfortunately the answer isn’t as simple. Much of this isn’t necessarily Google “individually and directly attacking people”, but instead Google providing others with the (otherwise unavailable) means to do so.
Regardless, is this an example that you were looking for? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761
I mean, to be open, I don’t actually see many consequences, so I don’t really do any particular things to protect privacy from like, google. I was sort of hoping someone here would give me one.
If you’re willing to spend 40$, various data brokers will sell you all the information people in this thread have mentioned
Disgusting that we need to pay for it
If it’s worth $3 to you, I recommend “Take This Lollipop”.
It used to be free, but I guess they gotta eat too.
It’s basically a creepy interactive movie that uses a person’s own personal data to scare them about privacy and what they put on the net.
You can use it to search for information from data breaches.
Wdym? You can’t directly access the data from the data breaches from the site
The site doesn’t exist as a portal to stolen data. It exists purely as a way to see if your data has been stolen in a data breach.
If you want to find said data. The site tells you in what breach it occurred and you can find it from there.
Amiunique is a good one that demonstrates how just with the specs of the device you are using (os, browser, screen size, browser version, user agent, color pallette, js engine, language, keyboard type, etc) you can create a totally unique fingerprint that can be used to track you without ever knowing your name, or who you are as a person.
Have them install duck duck go on their phones and turn on the app tracking protection and then they can see the data collected by companies they have never heard of. It will show how they try to collect your full name, email, and exact gps coordinates.
Most people aren’t going to care anyway. I do not care whatsoever and I build ELT and ML systems.
