Google’s Data Collection Practices: The Scary Truth

The major data scandals of the past five years or so have mainly focused on Facebook. Cambridge Analytica was a big slip up which severely damaged the reputation of the digital giant. However, as a massive digital company, Google has its own data collection practices and it may well shock you to learn the extent of these.

The scale of data collection by Google

A paper titled Google Data Collection was published in 2018 by Professor Douglas C. Schmidt of Vanderbilt University. The report revealed the extent of Google’s data collection, as well as how that data is being stored and potentially used.

The significant findings from this report were the following:

• A dormant Android phone still communicates data 14 times an hour to Google servers, 35% of which is your location data.
• Through their advertising technologies, Google has the ability to associate purportedly “user anonymous” data collected through passive means with the personal information of the user.
• A major part of Google’s data collection occurs while a user is not directly engaged with any of its products.

We can see from this that Google collects far more data than users knowingly surrender.

When it comes specifically to Google Search, the report found that data is collected related to search queries, browsing history, and ad-click/purchase activity.

Whenever Search is used, Google collects location data via various means of assessing locations on mobile or desktop devices. Google records all of the search activity of a user and links it back to their Google Account if they are logged in.

Google’s data storage practices

As well as the scale of Google collection, many people also believe that they store this data for much longer than is actually necessary. The reason for storing data is for recovery purposes as well as creating a better experience on Google by tailoring the experience.

If you look at Google’s Privacy Policy, they say the following: “We keep some data for the life of your Google Account if it’s useful for helping us understand how users interact with our features and how we can improve our services.”

You can choose to delete your data, but the privacy policy also reveals that ‘data can remain on these systems for up to six months’ following this to enable ‘safe and complete deletion’.

They have recently attempted to address concerns around their data collection practices by introducing automatic data deletion (prior to this, you had to delete most of your data manually which is a pretty tedious process).

Users will be able to choose a time limit of between 3 and 18 months after which the data concerned will automatically delete on a rolling basis.

Is Google reading your emails?

In 2018, an investigative report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Google has been allowing third-party software developers to scan the inboxes of Gmail users and, in some cases, even allowed human employees to read emails.

This was after Google had announced in 2017 that it would stop using software to automatically scan Gmail messages in order to target users with ads.

Google has made it clear that this cannot happen without users giving permission to these third-party apps. However, these ‘permissions’ are often agreed to by users without them fully understanding the repercussions of what they have agreed to. What is more, Google does very little to police the activities of these developers.

Are there alternatives to Google?

Many of us rely on Google in multiple aspects of our daily lives, from using Android phones to searching the web on our laptops. It can be hard to imagine a life without Google. But, with such extensive data collection, you might want to avoid them where possible.

Luckily, there are alternatives that mean you can avoid Google. And that even includes avoiding the search engine itself.

SearchScene, for example, is our charitable search engine that donates 95% of profits to charity. Not only does this help you to avoid Google’s data collection practices, but you can also make a valuable contribution to charity simply through your regular searching habits!

This article first appeared on Medium.