Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google (wsj.com) 151
Facebook may be in the hot seat right now for its collection of personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, but as The Wall Street Journal points out, "Google is a far bigger threat by many measures: the volume of information it gathers, the reach of its tracking and the time people spend on its sites and apps." From the report (alternative source): It's likely that Google has shadow profiles (data the company gathers on people without accounts) on as at least as many people as Facebook does, says Chandler Givens, CEO of TrackOff, which develops software to fight identity theft. Google allows everyone, whether they have a Google account or not, to opt out of its ad targeting, though, like Facebook, it continues to gather your data. Google Analytics is far and away the web's most dominant analytics platform. Used on the sites of about half of the biggest companies in the U.S., it has a total reach of 30 million to 50 million sites. Google Analytics tracks you whether or not you are logged in. Meanwhile, the billion-plus people who have Google accounts are tracked in even more ways. In 2016, Google changed its terms of service, allowing it to merge its massive trove of tracking and advertising data with the personally identifiable information from our Google accounts.
Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we've installed, demographics like age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we've shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn't use information from "sensitive categories" such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Because it relies on cross-device tracking, it can spot logged-in users no matter which device they're on. Google fuels even more data harvesting through its dominant ad marketplaces. There are up to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S., and collectively they know everything about us we might otherwise prefer they didn't -- whether we're pregnant, divorced or trying to lose weight. Google works with some of these brokers directly but the company says it vets them to prevent targeting based on sensitive information. Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world's two billion active Android mobile devices.
Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we've installed, demographics like age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we've shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn't use information from "sensitive categories" such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Because it relies on cross-device tracking, it can spot logged-in users no matter which device they're on. Google fuels even more data harvesting through its dominant ad marketplaces. There are up to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S., and collectively they know everything about us we might otherwise prefer they didn't -- whether we're pregnant, divorced or trying to lose weight. Google works with some of these brokers directly but the company says it vets them to prevent targeting based on sensitive information. Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world's two billion active Android mobile devices.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Try your cell company...
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Try your cell company...
That's why anyone who outsources their cell production to a 3rd party is a fool.
I'm going to keep making cells for myself the old fashioned way: by mitosis.
Re: (Score:2)
Definition of "inside the body" (Score:2)
Your cell production HAS been outsourced, to bacteria. They outnumber your "human" cells about 10 to 1
That number you are citing is not accurate [nih.gov] if you believe the latest research. Furthermore the numbers are estimates with huge error bars and variance around them. And the current estimates (closer to 1:1) are certain to be revised further as we learn more. The numbers you are citing come from a back of the envelope estimate based on flawed assumptions.
Furthermore the largest repositories of bacteria "inside" the human body is the gut which is technically outside the body [masculon.com]. I'm oversimplifying of course
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...wot?
Re: Seriously? (Score:1)
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Here's my conspiracy theory: The US government will roast any big tech company that does not given them access to your data in secret surveillance programs. If Google, Apple, and Facebook simply agree to let the government spy on you, all the negative press would go away.
So... Microsoft sees every keystroke you type, and AT&T historically cooperates with government secret surveillance programs... and now Murdoch's media machine is attacking Facebook, Google, and Apple, but leaving those companies alon
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Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been kinda confused that everyone is so angry at Facebook, while MS has been given a free pass.
Google makes sense to me; they've always been known to profile you so as to effectively sell you stuff. Free service, so you had to have known what was going on ( same goes for facebook mind you ).
But MS; they force 10 down everyone's throats with telemetry and who knows what other data being collected. Of the three, MS's data collection policies are the most opaque; you can't even find out what they know about you. And that's for a product they charge people for!
Yet no one seems to care. I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that outrage at Facebook is nothing more than an extension of (D)s throwing a fit because Trump got elected.
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been complaining for a long time about these groups, but i think this new wave of anger is because the masses are finally figuring out what only the few have known: data is power, and when it's abused, everything gets fucked quick. It's not a D or R thing, it's the fact that a lot more people are witnessing how things get fucked when they shouldn't.
It's a mirror of a lot of things in life.... some people see the problems before they happen, other's don't until it happens to them, some never do because they prefer to live in a fantasy land.
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Facebook, Google, MS... all three of these actually preform some kind of service for the data. The other beasts... the ones who offer no services but simple collect and peddle data are even worse. Acxiom, Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, Palantir, PeekYou, Rapleaf, and Recorded Future; these companies business is to collect and sell it data, and they've been around a long time. People have been complaining for a long time about these groups, but i think this new wave of anger is because the masses are finally figuring out what only the few have known: data is power, and when it's abused, everything gets fucked quick. It's not a D or R thing, it's the fact that a lot more people are witnessing how things get fucked when they shouldn't. It's a mirror of a lot of things in life.... some people see the problems before they happen, other's don't until it happens to them, some never do because they prefer to live in a fantasy land.
Or more because the old people in charge are finally starting to get their collective head around this new internet thingy. Eternal September just got a lot more eternal.
Re: Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Used to be when you paid for the OS, that was it.
Well, haven't 'paid for an OS' since 1996. Why pay for a worse alternative?
Google analytics? Oh, one of those things my adblocker^H^H bandwith optimizer disables?
Don't worry too much - we have so many ways to fight back.
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Used to be when you paid for the OS, that was it. Now they want you to pay for the OS....And also endure advertising. In the past, I always kept a windows system around just in case. Now they have been ejected with prejudice. Microsoft has no reason to be taking data that would let them show ads.
You can think of ads as a sort of fitness test to validate what they've understood from the machine algorithms that are training on your telemetry data you've "shared" with MS.
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a mirror of a lot of things in life.... some people see the problems before they happen, other's don't until it happens to them, some never do because they prefer to live in a fantasy land.
It also basically mirrors the problem of corruption. I mean, forget democracy or religion or any of the other things... the one thing which is most scary for the potential downfall of civilisation is I think, the level of corruption. And I don't mean to imply that a country like, say, USA is more corrupt than a notoriously corrupt country like [insert choice here], but whatever field of human endeavour, be it science or insurance or medicine or dog shows, the human mind seems to have a really hard time acting honestly and free of corruption. And as IQs have gone up, apparently, so has people's ability to hide, and implement, corruption. And who can say they would not act the same if hired by some big company and given opportunity to gain power? Maybe we should be teaching integrity in like, early school, but where would you find the individuals with the integrity to set the example?
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but i think this new wave of anger is because the masses are finally figuring out what only the few have known: data is power, and when it's abused, everything gets fucked quick
You half missed the point. People aren't afraid of the data collection or the power. That is precisely why the other companies get a free pass. They are exclusively pissed at the miss use, which is why Facebook specifically is being targeted. No one was under the delusion that Facebook wasn't collected a huge amount of data. Everyone knew Facebook collected it and monetised it. People know this about other vendors too.
About the only thing that anyone is pissed about is that this data was passed en-mass to a
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Facebook, Google, MS... all three of these actually preform some kind of service for the data. The other beasts... the ones who offer no services but simple collect and peddle data are even worse. Acxiom, Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, Palantir, PeekYou, Rapleaf, and Recorded Future; these companies business is to collect and sell it data, and they've been around a long time. People have been complaining for a long time about these groups, but i think this new wave of anger is because the masses are finally figuring out what only the few have known: data is power, and when it's abused, everything gets fucked quick. It's not a D or R thing, it's the fact that a lot more people are witnessing how things get fucked when they shouldn't. It's a mirror of a lot of things in life.... some people see the problems before they happen, other's don't until it happens to them, some never do because they prefer to live in a fantasy land.
Yup, It wouldn't surprise me if a little bird from one of those companies planted the idea for this article. Better to have everyone focusing on the tech giants and ignoring the non-tech companies that are even worse (cf. Experian).
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People don't hate Google or MS as much because they didn't put Trump in power.
Re: Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:1)
Anyone who picks policy based of facebook posts needs to be disenfranchised
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not so worried abut Facebook and Google holding data on me.
I am worried about companies getting access to the data collected by Facebook and Google. For example: Cambridge Analytica.
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the reason why you should be worried about Facebook and Google holding the data in the first place.
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Which is the reason why you should be worried about Facebook and Google holding the data in the first place.
Not really. It's why you should worry about Facebook (a company which never quite figured out how to monetise data) or a company which has other products (and makes your data secondary revenue) holding on to your data.
For companies that exist solely by the virtue of having perfected the art of selling you to 3rd parties you're relatively safe. Google knows more about everyone than anyone, and like the famed CocaCola recipe is sharing none of it. Oh but we'll provide you with an API that allows adverts to be
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At least you have a choice about using MS. And they don't collect the same kinds of personal data as FB and G. (Yeah yeah, I know, "telemetry" blah blah. But seriously, they're not collecting anything like the same sort or volume of data as the big boys in this story.)
What Google does right is - sure, they collect the data, but they don't share it - with anyone. They use it to sling ads themselves. To give someone else direct access to it would be like giving away their golden goose. So Google puts very, ve
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:4, Interesting)
By European standards, MS is a criminal enterprise at this time because of this. Unfortunately, data protection is still not taken seriously here and the respective laws are not enforced or it takes forever. My personal plan is to have a Win10 box (when I cannot avoid it anymore) used for nothing but gaming and gaming-related surfing and put everything else on a Linux machine, including an aggressively firewalled Win10 VM for MS office use (cannot get rid of that because customers).
It is a sad state of affairs where you have to regard major software vendors as the enemy. Kind of a tech version of fascism.
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By European standards, MS is a criminal enterprise at this time because of this.
Why? Microsoft collects debugging information via Telemetry. They claim, and I have yet to see evidence to the contrary, that they use this solely for debugging problems with Windows and Windows software and do not share it with other parts of the organisation for use in profiling or targeted advertising. All of this is explicitly permitted by the GDPR.
In addition, if you host anything in Azure, you have the option of using a data centre that is owned by Deutsche Telecom and which Microsoft US has no
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For any information _at_ _all_ to be sent to MS from _your_ computer in a non-obvious fashion, they need an explicit opt-in. EULA does not cover it. It does not matter what the information is.
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How are you supposed to verify US law enforcement has no access to something?
Microsoft has been audited by the German government for compliance with their regulations preventing sharing of sensitive data with the US. The data centres in question are operated by a legally separate company. If a US court wants access to them, then they must attempt to claim jurisdiction over a German company, which holds German government data. Good luck with that.
If Intel SGX really is the magical solution to anything getting hacked by anyone, why isn't it the hottest topic at every security conference in the world?
I take it you haven't been to any of the top security conferences for the last couple of years? There have been a lot of SGX-related pa
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By European standards, MS is a criminal enterprise at this time because of this.
Not at all. MS complies (bare minimum) with the EU rules but they do comply. A lot of people read more into the rules than what is actually in there, but the gist of things is you're free to collect stuff provided you tell people (they do during the setup), give people the option to find out what is collected (there's a KB on it), and protect the data (no real breaches known so far). The new rules that come into effect in May provide additional requirements such as the requirement to allow users to delete t
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You claim MS is not transferring data in the background? Got any proof for that? Because there is ample indication to the contrary...
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Rather than asking me to prove a negative how about stepping up to my challenge for you to prove the positive. Please why not show us exactly what MS is doing that is illegal and reference the law they are breaking in the process.
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Stop using cheap manipulation tricks. Maybe read the reports of the European and Swiss data protection commissioners? You are _uninformed_ or pretend to be (which is worse).
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Indeed. If they were clean, they would not need to care at all.
Re: Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:2)
Google - without my input - keeps track of where I park, learns where and when I work, manages incoming communication to work with my schedule, gives me driving directions based on how I drive, and otherwise makes very effective use of the data I share with them.
MS provides me nothing.
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:4)
Yet no one seems to care. I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that outrage at Facebook is nothing more than an extension of (D)s throwing a fit because Trump got elected.
Facebook got CAUGHT selling your data to others. MS haven't as yet.
You didn't really put much effort into your inescapable conclusion did you?
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:2)
Facebook's business model is selling your data. MS's business model is figuring out new ways to charge for Office.
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Facebook got CAUGHT selling your data to others. MS haven't as yet.
Facebook got caught selling their own data. In the United States the person who collects the data owns it.
All of those Facebook users that posted personal data to the website gave it away voluntarily. Why do you think Zuckerburg called them, "dumb fucks?"
Re:Facebook/Google or...MS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say first of all, the general public doesn't really give a shit about data collection, because they don't understand what data collection is capable of. People ignored facebooks nonsense for a decade more or less, until it became a major news story of how one group used that data. People still don't understand the possibility that similar levels of mass population manipulation could be happening every day.
People will care, but it's a very abstract concept at the moment, they are theoretical problems that are hard to visualise for somebody outside the industry that doesn't think it every day. There is always a time-delay between new technology ill effects and general public awareness. Feels like things are starting to change now.
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It seems to have escaped you that win10 has very poor uptake, it gets slated regularly. A lot if people have been very vocal about how bad it is. True half the population don't care, but that's par for the course. Half the population don't vote either.
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I've been kinda confused that everyone is so angry at Facebook, while MS has been given a free pass.
Becuase you and everyone has missed the point. No one gives a shit when companies collect information. They happily hand it over all the time. They care exclusively about their information then being onsold to 3rd parties en mass and then used against them.
Google doesn't on sell information, but rather acts as a middleman. No one gets to you without Google, and no one gets at you without Google.
Microsoft, Apple, etc may or may not on sell information, but so far no major 3rd party has been discovered with a
Whataboutism (Score:5, Insightful)
This is even dumber that the average political use of whataboutism...
Google: knows everything about you, will use what it knows to serve ads to you based on a target profile supplied by the advertiser.
Facebook: knows everything about you and gave your data and your friends data and your friends-friends data to anyone that could be bothered to ask, oh and also sold some ads.
So similar.
Re:Whataboutism (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
There you go 14 years of it.
The "opt in" is bullshit. Facebook is very opt out, and the information it was giving app developers was friends and friends of friends information, that never even knew the app existed.
In Australia for example, around 50 people used the app, which harvested the data of over 300,000 people.
They may not have bundled the data and handed it to them personally, but they were at least wilfully negligent.
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Yeah, no. Google don't force you to run Facebook, Facebook do by crafting deals with telcos and phone companies to force it's app on you, or by forcing you to run an app rather than just using the web browser version for messages.
Last I saw iOS was happy enough to allow Facebook to ask for permissions on your contacts too, so what is that red herring about?
I'm all for changing the law to mandate how people handle data; why does the US allow anyone to use your SSN for ID for example, but suggesting that gran
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Could you give some examples of facebook giving/selling data to other companies?
Fuck me have you been living underground this year?
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There's no whataboutism. Both of these companies suck.
If you care about your privacy - and especially if the recent Facebook news has inspired your interest - then you should be going through Google's services as well and minimizing the amount of data you supply them. Because they have plenty of data on you to use against your best interests, and a large analytics operation to figure out how to do it.
Both Facebook and Google have too much data. Period.
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There's no whataboutism. Both of these companies suck.
Yeah there's no whataboutism, there's just frothing outrage and inability to exercise a braincell causing people to compare two wildly different companies with wildly different practices and lump them together without reason.
Both Facebook and Google have too much data.
How much data they have and whether it is too much depends entirely on the purpose of said data and how they acquired it.
Period.
Use a tampon.
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Google may suck, but Facebook definitely do, repeatedly and at length.
It's like comparing the sins of a country that still practice the death penalty in the modern age to one that gasses its citizens en mass.
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That assumes that the author isn't a "friend" of Facebook, reading the headlines of his recent submissions about Facebook (mostly positive) and Google (overwhelming negative), I don't think it's going out on a limb to suggest that.
Vis: http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Okay, I admit it's a better submission than mine (Score:2)
However, just for the record, below is my relatively shallow submission on the same topic. What I was asking Slashdot about a couple of weeks ago was also relevant, essentially for tools to reconstruct what the google knows about each of us on OUR side, not the google's. I already got the data (from both Facebook and the google), but it means pretty much nothing to me.
Part of my approach was avoiding the WSJ and their paywall. I think the financial models most strongly supporting by the WSJ are NOT part of
Whataboutism (Score:4, Insightful)
Checks... (Score:1)
Threat (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IFF you're a criminal this is entirely likely, but if you're a citizen, it's almost completely absurd.
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You think Facebook wouldn't have sold that information to the Stazi? Facebook are still trying to move into China and they understand the price of entry all too well....
Re:Threat (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you honestly think that if you concentrate power in an unaccountable organisation it is less likely to abuse this power because said organisation doesn't call itself a government?
Take a look at the history of the British East India Company if you want to see what happens when companies have more power than governments. At least modern governments have structures that are intended to allow those over whom they have power to replace them periodically.
Google doesn't give away your data (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, Google collects all kinds of data about you. But it doesn't give or sell that data to third parties like app makers. It uses it to target ads. The ad companies don't get lists of your friends or your activities, to use how they want.
So yes, Google does collect a lot of information about you, but it's not the same as what Facebook does.
Re: (Score:3)
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Facebook's data sharing has been an open "secret" for years. Their practices were widely known among developers, a fact that led to so many app developers gathering and misusing data. If Google had such secrets and were just waiting to be "caught," we technical people would already know.
Re: (Score:3)
Google was only not caught yet.
Quite the opposite. Google was "caught" offering a very sophisticated set of APIs that they have gone to great lengths to design and integrate into a service they exclusively offer so as to *not* sell your data. They have put a shitload of money and effort into ensuring that all analytics on the data is done themselves, contain it on their own data centres, and ensure that they only provide access to your eyes.
If you're waiting for them to get caught selling your data, I suggest you get a very comfortable c
Could someone please ... (Score:3)
... take Captain Obvious off the slashdot editor's board? This is slashdot, news for nerds, not The Daily Sun, news for idiots.
Thank you.
"I'll keep that between me and G" (Score:4, Informative)
I often say "I'll keep that between me and G".
Google, not God.
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Until government serves them with a subpoena...
That's why it is also spelled with a G.
Private data (Score:1)
And you know who has more PII than either of them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your ISP (Interwebs Service Provider) has even more Personally Identifiable Information (PII) than either Facebook or Google combined. More even then the CIA, NSA & FBI.
Think about it: every single bit you send over the InterWebs goes through their routers over their wires, even if you use a satellite provider.
Who better than the 21st century TelCo's to trust w/ you most intimate on-line details? AT&T, Comcast, Frontier, Verizon, et al. all have spotless, impeccable records when it comes to respecting your privacy and guarding against data breaches.
NOT!
At least Google claims to strip the low-order octet (last 4 bits) from your 32-bit IP address when recording PII. That means they may know what ISP you're using and roughly in what town/county, but no finer resolution than that in their aggregate user data. Facebook makes no such claim, as far as I know. And your ISP records & retains full IP-address details in their logs for up to 2 years (or more), even if you're using VPN or Tor or some other presumed “privacy protection” device.
That's why unless you're using local strong encryption of all your data & Interwebs traffic, you're a privacy chump. Even then, though, that protects only your data, not your meta-data of with whom you've communicated, when and how many packets, etc. Big Brother likes it that way.
So why hasn't anyone dragged the ISP's before a Congressional hearing on data privacy yet? In who's pockets are they really... uhm... in? Just askin'. ;-)
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Think about it: every single bit you send over the InterWebs goes through their routers over their wires, even if you use a satellite provider.
Well, https removes 99% of that information, my friend. They might see that you are connecting to Facebook or downloading 200 MB of data from Youtube, and thus infer that you have a Facebook account or watch Youtube videos, but they don't know who your friends are or which video you watched, so their PII profile is very limited.
Of course, if the domain happens to be "ilikebigbutts.com" or "bombrecipes.ru" your profile will have a more sensitive quality to it (unless those domains share an IP pool with sever
Honey Pot (Score:1)
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Does it matter? (Score:2)
How does this affect me in my day to day life?
It amounts to targetted ads, right?
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What's so bad, precisely, about targetted ads?
I mean, if having to deal with ads in the first place is something that we have to live with, particularly for services that one doesn't have to pay for financially, isn't it preferable to have ads that interest you than ads that are irrelevant?
Not a rhetorical question here... I'm genuinely curious, why are targetted ads seen as a bad thing?
Re: (Score:2)
If an algorithm that is trying to predict what will interest you guessed incorrectly then that is no different from your perspective to an untargetted ad in the first place. Why should it have to be all or nothing? Isn't it still better that at least some of the ads might be of interest to you?
If that's not good enough, then the problem isn't really about the targeted nature at all, and that's just a scapegoat to use about not liking uninteresting ads, which again isn't going to be any different from
break up Google (Score:2)
Google has gained too much monopoly power, and has become far too intrusive into people's private lives. It's time for Uncle Sam to step in and break up Google.
At very least, each of the units below needs to become a fully separate company that is legally barred from exchanging data with the others.
Android
Search
Surveillance ("advertising")
Gmail
Cloud platform
Maps
Media content (play music, play books, etc)
Chrome browser
ChromeOS
Frustrating (Score:1)
It's frustrating to realize how many Slashdot readers actually believe that Google collects all of the data it does simply for the purpose of targeted advertising. Consider the fact that they have algorithms to read every message that goes through Gmail. They combine this with data they gather in following almost everyone as they surf across the web. The emails provide loads of personal, and personally identifiable information about anyone using the service, as well as anyone replying to those who do.
Keepin
Quantity's not the most important thing (Score:1)