Have you ever explored what
Google shares with you about his knowledge about you?
Well, I suggest you go to your
gmail account, click on your picture on the top right of your screen, and then on
“account”.
Apart from some basic personal
information (how does Google know all my phone numbers from different
countries!?), you’ll find some pieces of interesting information.
On “Data tools”, you can “Search for yourself”
and find out what people see when they search for you on Google. More
interesting, you can “Stay current with web alerts”, and receive an email from
Google when new information about you appears online (eg. when there’s a new
search result for your name).
If you now go to “Account
history” a bunch of information is available.
On the “Things you search for”
you’ll find your own search history (obviously it includes both desktop and
mobile search), and also some stats about your search activity.
If you have the “Places you’ve
been” active, you can see a map and a line showing where you were each day. If
you have bad memory and were asking yourself “what did I do two days ago”,
don’t worry, Google tells you!
You can continue exploring the
website, see what youtube searches you did, and what have you watched, and you
finally arrive at the bottom of the “Account History” tab and have a section of
“Ads settings”.
Google shows you some of your
profile characteristics that it uses to show you “interest-based” ads on
search, youtube, maps and gmail.
Apart from some basic
demographical data that Google knows from my profile, they show me what
languages do I speak (based on websites I visited) and also my interests. Yes,
Google just told me what are my interests based on both my search history and
websites I visited.
Finally, you have an “opt-out”
of interest based ads option, Google states that you’ll continue to see ads,
but they “may not be related to factors such as your interests, age, or gender”.
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