How Google stores the collected data. What services of IT corporations collect user information Google chrome collects information about users

Does not collect information for sale, or even more so in the interests of some kind of universal conspiracy.

Everything is much more prosaic: personal information helps to determine the tastes and habits of users. For this, Google stores data about gender, age, interests, as well as user search queries, including voice.

For example, after analyzing the queries of an individual person, the search engine will offer goods or services related to the object of previous queries. For example, if a user was looking for where to buy a smartphone, then contextual advertising will offer accessories for this phone model.

Another subject of controversy is the collection of information about the location of its clients by the "corporation of good", which makes especially nervous ones constantly turn off the transfer of geodata.

Google collects data on the movement of users using their own smartphones: when using, for example, the Google Maps service, the owner of the device gives out his location. The time during which this or that user was in a certain place, and even the speed of movement, are recorded.

Thanks to this information, the search engine will give out places that provide certain services closest to the user, again coordinating with his interests.

Not everyone will like the fact that a huge multinational corporation has so much of its personal data. Of course, you can turn off some of the "tracking" services, but most are unlikely to refuse, for example, watching videos on YouTube just so that Google does not know the user's preferences.

One of the examples of users outraged by the "privacy violation" was Anton Burkov, who filed a lawsuit against Google for the fact that the corporation, in his opinion, read his personal correspondence. Burkov demanded 50 thousand rubles from the company. for moral damage. ordered to recover the full amount from the defendant, but Google's lawyers appealed the court's decision. As a result, the Moscow City Court dismissed the company's claim, obliging Google to pay 50 thousand rubles. However, the company can still appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

However, Google is far from the only company that accumulates personal data of its customers.

Among the companies that "follow" the users of their services, there is also one that has recently been subjected to a flurry of criticism due to the huge amount of data collected by the latest version of Microsoft's operating system - Windows 10.

How to deal with the collection of data by organizations, whose services are used by tens of millions of people every day, is an open question. On the one hand, in the event of a software failure or hacking of data storages, the scale of the "leaking" of personal information will be catastrophic: the confidential data of millions of people will become public, and the corporation that leaked will be inundated with lawsuits from outraged users. Of course, every company does its best to prevent such incidents.

On the other hand, the collection of personal data takes the quality of the services offered to a new level. This practice allows a simple user to "surf" the Internet with much greater comfort, helps to separate "wheat from chaff" and generally speeds up the search for information.

It is worth noting that the privacy policy of each corporation that collects certain data about its customers contains all the information that the user permits to store when confirming the terms; in the event that such an agreement seems unacceptable, it is always possible to reject the terms of use.

An example of unauthorized access to personal information of users is the case of the social network Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg's company experimented with the emotional state of users

In 2014, the company set up an experiment to influence the emotional state of people by filtering positive and negative posts in the feed without notifying their users.

This incident negatively affected the image of the corporation itself: the company had to create an internal commission on ethical and legal issues of experiments, and also retrained staff in this area.

In general, we can say that there is nothing in the collection of personal data that could harm the average user: for the most part, this process is performed to improve the quality of the services provided. So it's too early to talk about Big Brother.

It is known that the American search engine collects information about users and their actions. But what exactly does Google know about you? How to remove information about yourself and your actions from the Google server? Information in our article.

What Google Knows About You

To analyze the collected data, you need to go to this address. According to Google, this information is available only to the owner of the account, which is indicated on the website.

For an Android mobile phone, the list of recorded user actions is impressive. Everything is taken into account: from watching videos on YouTube to opening applications.

Open More Google Activity and select Location History (Manage History hyperlink).

All your movements around the world over the past few years are collected here.

How to remove Google user statistics

From the menu on the left, select Select Delete Option.

Select the period and criteria for filtering the actions to be deleted and click the Delete button.

How dangerous is Google surveillance

It is clear that using the services of any company, you trust it to collect certain data about yourself. If you don't want the pages you visit to be logged, use Safe Browsers or Incognito Mode. You can additionally disable the collection of movement information on your phone.

It's worth seeing what the American service knows about you in order to understand the importance of ensuring the security of your account. If you have a simple password, change it to a more complex one. Take responsibility for safety. But if anything, now we know where you can erase all the accumulated information.

The practical benefit of such surveillance is the ability to control your child's account, if you have access to it. You can see which videos he watches, which sites he goes to. At the same time, there is no serious violation of the privacy of correspondence. Google will record that you have used the VK app, but will not be able to read the messages.

When you take any action on Google's services, we collect data about them. For more information on what information we collect, why we do it, and how you can manage your information, see our Privacy Policy. It also explains why the retention period of different types of data is not the same.

You can delete some data yourself at any time, others are deleted automatically, and the third, if necessary, we store for a long time. If you delete any data, we will follow special rules. As a result, your data completely disappears from our servers or is stored there only in an impersonal form. How Google Anonymizes Data

What information we keep until you delete it

There are many tools out there to help you manage the data that is stored in your Google account. Specifically, you can:

delete entries on the My Activities page;
delete photos, documents and other content;
remove various products from your Google Account;
completely delete your google account.

The data will remain in your Google account until you delete it. If you use our services without logging into your Google account, you can also delete some information, such as information that you used our services using a particular device, browser or application.

Data that is stored for a specific period of time

In some cases, we do not provide the ability to delete any data, but we store it for a certain time. The retention period of all types of information depends on the purpose of its collection. For example, in order for the service interfaces to be displayed correctly on the screens of different devices, we can store information about the height and width of the browser for up to 9 months. Some data is depersonalized during a specified storage period. For example, from ad data stored in server logs, part of the IP address is removed after 9 months, and cookie information is removed after 18 months.

Information Stored Before Deleting Your Google Account

Some information allows us to better understand how we can improve our services and how users interact with them, so we keep it for the duration of your Google account. For example, if you delete a specific Google search query on the My Activities page, information about how often you search may be saved, but not what exactly you were looking for. When you close your Google account, your search frequency is also deleted.

Information that is stored for a long time for specific purposes

We store some information intended for certain purposes for a long time in accordance with the law or business requirements. For example, if Google makes a payment to you or accepts funds from you, the data is stored for as long as is necessary for tax or accounting purposes. Some of the purposes for which data may be stored for a long period of time:

Safe and complete deletion of data

As soon as a user erases data from their Google Account, we immediately proceed to delete it from the respective service and all our systems. First of all, we exclude any possibility of viewing the data and using it to personalize the work with Google services. For example, if you delete information about a video you watched on the My Activities page, YouTube will not be able to see when the video was stopped.

Next, we launch the procedure for the safe and complete removal of data from our storage systems. Thanks to it, we can provide protection against accidental data loss, as well as peace of mind for users. The entire procedure usually takes about two months. At the same time, there is often a period for recovering data if it was unintentionally deleted. It usually lasts up to one month.

If you have contacted Google by contacting support, providing feedback, or submitting a bug, we may retain this information.

Examples of

You sent feedback in Gmail, Drive, or another Google app

Google does not hide the fact that it will know a lot about its users, if not everything. Even when you created your account, you were warned that they would track your search history, YouTube views, audio information, purchases, contacts, call data. But all this is spelled out in a multi-page agreement, which not everyone can read to the end.

Google explains that all this is done in order to adapt to users and make products more convenient. For example, provide customized offers, content or applications. But most importantly, the information is used to select the most tailored advertising for you.

Why Google surveillance is dangerous

You should limit the data that Google collects by default, if only because your personal information may fall into the wrong hands. And not only if someone hacks the account.

Your information can be leaked to the Net. Through your fault

Thus, in July, the Yandex search engine indexed files from the Google Docs service that were not protected by privacy settings. included in Google Docs files. The first thing users found through Yandex search were passwords. Passwords to personal and work accounts in social networks, to e-mail and other services turned out to be publicly available. In addition, e-wallet numbers were found in the documents. However, all password-protected documents did not appear in the search results. The leak was due to the negligence of the users themselves.

Your information can be passed on to strangers. Perfectly legal

The user agreement clearly states to whom Google can leak your confidential information:

Private companies, if you have given your consent. An example from Google: "If you use Google Home to contact the driver call service, we will provide your address to this service only with your permission."
Google affiliates and other trusted companies and entities for processing on behalf of Google.
Law enforcement agencies, security officials, the FSB.
Publishers, advertisers, developers. Example from Google: “We provide this information to enable users to understand trends in their use of our services. In addition, we allow individual partners to collect information from your browser or device using their own cookies and other technologies and use it to serve ads and measure their effectiveness. "

Why does Google follow you

The task of Google, like any commercial structure in this world, is to make money. One way is to sell ads more effectively. For this, the service collects a huge amount of information about everything. After all, you register and use the product for free, and for each you have to pay for free, one way or another.

Excerpt from Google Terms of Service:

How to get rid of Google tracking

If you just got sick of Google ads that offer you products for your requests (you never know what and when you were looking for and do not want to advertise it), then you can turn off personalization. For this . But this does not mean that Google will stop collecting information on you. It will just bother less.

However, anyone can deny Google not only offer advertising, but also collect information.

For Google to stop following entirely (in any case, according to the parameters that it officially talks about), it's just that it is now enabled by default.

If you are ready to provide information about your preferences on YouTube, but do not want to be listened to, then the following instructions are for you:

To access your personal dossier, you need to log into your account,

Here you can find settings for search queries and viewed pages; the places you've visited; information from devices; voice prompts and commands; video you searched and watched on YouTube.

All data from your phone's microphone is stored. Once you say "OK, Google", and everything that interests you will become known to advertisers.