Google's File on You Is 10x Bigger Than Facebook's... Here's How to Download It
If you’re like the average internet user, you probably use Google on a daily basis. Between search, email, documents, phone operating systems and other services, Google is perhaps the most pervasive force on the entire internet, undergirding huge parts of it.
While Facebook is the big headline-maker in terms of privacy — prompting numerous people to cancel their accounts or download Facebook’s file on them — Google hasn’t really been under the microscope.
Yet, Google’s file on you is quite a bit bigger. How big? Dylan Curran, a web developer from Ireland, found out firsthand when he looked at what the software giant had collected on him.
In his case, it was 5.5GB — more than 10 times what Facebook had on him, according to Zero Hedge.
Curran chronicled the whole thing via Twitter, and it definitely seems to have touched a nerve.
“Want to freak yourself out? I’m gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it,” Curran wrote back in March.
Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Curran found out that the web giant had a record of everywhere he’d been in his home country of Ireland for the last 12 months, including details about when he was there and how long it took him to get from one point to another.
2. This is every place I have been in the last twelve months in Ireland, going in so far as the time of day I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one pic.twitter.com/I1kB1vwntT
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
As NBC News points out, Google doesn’t sell your information in the same way that Facebook does.
However, just because it won’t get itself embroiled in the same kind of Cambridge Analytica-style scandal that Mark Zuckerberg’s company finds itself in doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues with this data collection. As Curran notes, the point is to track you so that they can tailor ads to your location and previous searches, among other things.
4. https://t.co/QRfgwkNj80 Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lbs in one day?) and income
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
The file Google keeps on you includes that creepy map and your entire online and search activity, what YouTube videos you watch, what apps you use and your advertising profile.
Curran wasn’t happy finding out what Google knew about him.
“I was really like: ‘Oh, my God. This is preposterous,'” he told NBC News.
If you want to download your data, here’s the site. You can delete whatever data you want, although as Curran pointed out, this isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.
3. https://t.co/qFCgY6QLN5 Google stores search history across all your devices on a separate database, so even if you delete your search history and phone history, Google STILL stores everything until you go in and delete everything, and you have to do this on all devices
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Google, for its part, hasn’t really been caught up in the privacy controversy that’s plagued Facebook. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not at least trying to reassure people that their data is safe.
“We build powerful, easy-to-use tools that enable you to adjust your privacy preferences, anytime. We’re constantly working to refine these tools based on your feedback.”
Whether those are just words remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure — a lot of internet users are going to be shocked to find out exactly what the search giant has on them.
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