Have you ever wondered, while scrolling down your daily feeds, how you always see ads of your interest? You may also have wondered how on YouTube you always get suggestions for your favourite videos, making you crave more to use the app.
We are being watched, and it is no doubt ‘cringe-worthy’. The recent Facebook scandal shows how people’s private data can become a source of income for firms like Cambridge Analytica, which serves their purpose without having any responsibility.
What Google stores from your browsing history:
1. location: Google tracks your location when you switch it on.
2. Searches: Google stores all your search history across all devices that you’ve used so far. This data is stored in a separate database by the search engine, that can not be deleted with mere clearing history. Yes, if it is done one by one from all devices, it gets vanished.
3. Personal data and take out document: Our information such as age, gender, hobbies, income etc are used by Google so that it can make our ad profile. Google also has an option to download all the data such as our emails, bookmarks, contacts, Google drive files, products you’ve bought from Google, all the downloaded images. The Google Drive documents not only contain your files but also the deleted ones.
4. Apps: Google stores all the apps including third-party apps like Facebook and extensions that you use in its database. It stores all the information related to these apps such as how, when and where you use it.
5. YouTube search history: YouTube knows your preferred videos, religious beliefs, our personality type, and much more as Google track them as well.