Things Google Know about you
What we were discussing there was
about the Google’s endless desire to collect information about their visitors.
We saw that Google is creating a general idea about you based upon these data
for their advertising purposes (and also to provide a better experience for
you).
So today we are going to see what
Google knows about you. But before we start let’s consider some important
things.
Why you need to know about this?
Yes, if you do not have any idea about
this, you might not understand the importance and the risk behind this. If you
are using any website, it is very important to be aware about their policies.
You should know whether they collect any of your personal details, whether they
store Cookies in your computer. If they do so, definitely they will mention
about that in their policies, and by using the website you eventually agree to
their terms and conditions, which mean you allow collecting your personal
details. That is the same scenario with Google as well.
Sometimes people use Google to search
about very sensitive things. As an example let’s say a person is having a
serious problem which bothers him / her so much, and he is not in a position to
reveal it to anybody else. Now this person wants to know the opinion of others
about that problem, and whether anybody else has had the same experience. So as
the best option available he uses Google to search the internet (yes you are
right, probably he will find something similar in Yahoo answers :D). The most
important thing is, now this person has left very sensitive information about
him online. Even though Google protects the privacy of its users, what will
happen if anybody else gets this information? Yes, it will be a serious
question. So you must think twice before acting online. The purpose of this article
is to make you aware about this. Luckily now you know this, and also you have
the ability to see what Google is storing about you.
My suggestion is, do not leave any
personal data with Google. That will be healthy for you. In the meantime do not
worry about other simple and common queries you search in your day to day life.
Those queries will help you to get the search results that match with your
preferences.
What
data Google has collected about me?
This will be the question you will
have once you finish reading the above paragraph. Well, the main data will be
your search queries. Besides them, they log your activity in internet including
the sites you visit, emails in your Gmail inbox etc.
How to find the details Google stored about
you?
You cannot view all the logged
details. But as a summary you can view your activity in Google. This feature is
known as “Google Web History”.
First you have to visit http://google.com/history/
You can see they have stated why they are storing these data with them; read the tagline, “Your history makes your Google experience better”. This is what I have been explaining to you.· More Relevant Results.· Smarter Predictions.· History on any device.
Then you will be asked to log in to
your account.
Once you log in, you can see some
detailed reports about your online activity in Google including the total
number of Searches you have made through Google, Your daily, weekly &
monthly activity,
Below those charts, you will see all
your queries stored by Google, from there you can choose which queries to be
kept and which queries to be deleted. As I mentioned earlier, if you find
anything very sensitive, immediately delete that from the history.
Now, something from me :)
This is a snapshot of my dashboard
taken few days back;
Hourly search activity
You can see that I am mostly searching
Google in the middle of the day, Look at how the length of the bars have
increased suddenly from 6 to 8, and gradually getting increased till 12. After
that the length drops down till 6. And
exactly at 8 the bar goes up. Yes, I agree with this chart. I start my day at 6
am, and sometimes I search Google from the very moment I wake Up :D After that
I go to work at 8 am and till 5 pm, I search many things (Hope my boss will not
read this post :D). You also can check whether your graphs match with your
daily routine. (Don’t forget to leave your idea here as a comment.)
I hope you enjoyed reading this post
and at least few of you guys added something to your life. Of course these
stuffs are really cool to check out. Please let me know what you think.
Categories
:
Tech
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