Woman makes mind blowing revelation about the amount of personal data that Google collects
Through its search engine, Chrome, Gmail, and cloud services among others, Google has become an essential part of everyday life in the digital age. To provide its services, the tech giant asks for access to details such as phone numbers, age, and gender. Google also collects various information by keeping an eye on our activities online so it can curate suitable ads based on our preferences. Considering all the metadata that we provide to Google, it's not unusual to wonder how much information Google holds about us.
With this question, One TikTok creator @leakalache shared a video highlighting the privacy concerns of Google users. In the video with an overlay text that says, "Everything Google knows about you," Lea proceeds to look up "ads settings on Google." This takes her to her Google accounts page under the "Ad personalization" section. Google redirects Lea to the segment in her account that shows how ads are personalized for users.
Below that seemingly accurate information has been listed about her. "Ads are based on the personal info you have added to your Google account, data from advertisers that partner with Google, and Google's estimation of your interests," the information on her Google account reads. Then there are mentions of Lea's age which is shown between 18 to 24 years old, her gender, the languages she speaks, her possible job preferences, and interests such as browsing celebrity and entertainment news among others. There is also additional information about her philanthropic activities as well as notes on how she has looked for coupons and discounts online as well.
Many people who stumbled into this video found it alarming while many were unfazed by this information because they already knew about the way Google functions. @itsv1v1 wrote, "It thought I speak Japanese, I don't. Thought I was 18-24, but I’m not. Thought I liked football, I don't, thought I used Etsy I don't. Almost all wrong answers." @user197128622808 wondered, "Is this an elaborate joke or do young people actually not know how modern internet and marketing works? This has been known for a while." @heyulilbitch shared, "It shows 18-24, female, marketing, computer science, home decor, horror films, cats and a lot of other stuff."
@yokama16 joked, "Well guys, all of us are 35+ years old in Google because it doesn't allow kids so we used another birth year." For those who are unaware of how to stop Google from gaining too much insight from your browsing history and collecting your personal information unnecessarily, all you need to do is change your Google account settings from the Activity Control option. Google monitors a user's location history, app activity, and collects data whenever an individual uses a Google service. By Simply turning off this setting and auto-deleting browsing history, one can have a more personalized experience with Google services without revealing too much of their private info to the big tech firm.
Follow @leakalache on TikTok for more videos like this.