You may know that
Google is tracking you, but most people don't realize the extent of it.
Luckily, there are simple steps you can take to dramatically reduce Google's
tracking.
But first, what
exactly are they tracking? Unlike searching on DuckDuckGo, when you search on Google, they keep your search history
forever. That means they know
every search you’ve ever done on Google. That alone is pretty scary, but it’s
just the shallow end of the very
deep pool of data that they try to
collect on people.
What most people don’t
realize is that even if you don’t use any Google products directly, they’re
still trying to discover as much as they can about you. Google trackers have been
found on 75% of the top million
websites. This means they're
also trying to track most everywhere you go on the internet, trying to slurp up
your browsing history!
Most people also don’t
know that Google runs most of the ads you see across the internet and in apps –
you know those ones that follow you around everywhere? Yup, that’s Google, too.
They aren’t really a search company anymore – they’re a tracking company. They
are tracking as much as they can for these annoying and intrusive ads,
including recording every time you see them, where you saw them, if you clicked
on them, etc.
But even that’s not
all…
If You Use Google
Products
If you do use Google
products, they track you even more. In addition to tracking everything you’ve
ever searched for on Google (e.g. “weird rash”), Google also tracks every video
you’ve ever watched on YouTube. Many people actually don’t know that Google owns YouTube; now you know.
And if you use Android
(yeah, Google owns that too), then Google is also usually tracking:
·
Every place you’ve
been via Google Location Services.
·
How often you use your
apps, when you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact
with. (This is just excessive by any measure.)
If you use Gmail, they
of course also have all your emails and contacts. If you use Google Calendar,
they know schedule. There’s a pattern here: For all Google products (Hangouts,
Music, Drive, etc.), you can expect the same level of tracking; that is, pretty
much anything they can track, they will.
Oh, and if you use
Google Home, they also store a live recording of every command you (or anyone
else) has ever said to your device! Yes, you heard that right (err… they heard
it) – you can check out all the recordings on your Google activity
page.
Essentially, if you
don't tell them not to, they’ll track pretty close to, well, everything you do
on the internet. In fact, even if you tell them to stop tracking you, Google
has been known to not really listen, for example with location history.
You Become the Product
Why does Google want
all of your information anyway? Simple: as stated, Google isn’t a search company
anymore, they’re a tracking company. All of these data points allow Google to
build a pretty robust profile about you. In some ways, by keeping such close
tabs on everything you do, they may know you better than you know yourself!
The result of all that
tracking is that Google uses your personal profile to sell ads, not only on
their search engine, but also on over three million other websites and apps.
Every time you visit one of these sites or apps, Google is following you around
with hyper-targeted ads, trying to influence your behavior.
It’s exploitative. By
allowing Google to collect all this info, you are allowing hundreds of
thousands of advertisers to bid on serving you ads based on your sensitive
personal data. Everyone involved is profiting from your information, except
you. You are the product.
It doesn’t have to be
this way. It is entirely possible for a web-based business to be profitable
without making you the product – since 2014, DuckDuckGo has been profitable without storing or sharing any
personal information on people at all. You can read more about our
business model here.
The Myth of “Nothing
to Hide”
Some may argue that
they have “nothing to hide,” so they are not concerned with the amount of
information Google has collected and stored on them, but that argument is fundamentally
flawed for
many reasons.
Everyone has
information they want to keep private: Do you close the door when you go to the
bathroom, or cover your windows when it gets dark? Privacy is about control
over our personal information. We don’t want it in the hands of everyone, and
certainly don’t want people profiting on it without our consent or
participation.
In addition, privacy
is essential to democratic institutions like voting and everyday situations
such as getting medical care and performing financial transactions. Without it,
there can be significant harms.
On an individual
level, lack of privacy leads to putting people into a filter bubble, getting manipulated by ads, discrimination, fraud, and identity theft. On a societal
level, it can lead to deepened polarization and societal manipulation as we’ve
unfortunately been seeing multiply in recent years.
You Can Live Google
Free
Basically, Google
tries to track too much. It’s creepy and simply just more information than one
company should have on anyone.
Thankfully, there are
many good ways to reduce your Google footprint, even close to zero! If you are
ready to live without Google, we have recommendations for services to replace their suite of
products, as well as instructions for clearing your Google
search history. It might feel like
you are trapped in the Google-verse, but it is possible to break free.
For starters, just
switching the search engine for all your searches goes a long way. After all,
you share your most intimate questions with your search engine; at the very
least, shouldn’t those be kept private? If you switch to the
DuckDuckGo app and
extension you will not
only make your searches anonymous, but also block Google’s most widespread and
invasive trackers as you navigate the web.
If you’re unfamiliar
with DuckDuckGo, we're the leading provider of privacy protection tools to help
you seamlessly take back control of your personal information online. We’ve
been providing a private alternative to Google Search at https://duckduckgo.com for over a decade, and also offer a mobile private browser
for iOS and Android (DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser) as well as
browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials) to
protect your desktop browsing.
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