The World Wide Web has been around since 1993, but in just three decades, it has evolved from a static platform for social interactions and media sharing into a dynamic space that influences every part of our lives. In the early days of the Internet, users weren’t as concerned with data tracking—mainly because they didn’t know much about it in the first place.
Technology was only starting to become more refined, so people assumed that because they didn’t have a name or photo attached to their activities, they’d be anonymous. On the other hand, data usage and sharing were primitive and benign, which meant the information that sites were collecting didn’t expose people to a high level of risk.
Fast-forward to the present, and data privacy has become such a major concern that Internet users—at least the careful ones—have become conscious about every single move they make online.
A Quick History of Google Activity Tracking
Google didn’t use to have such a comprehensive ecosystem of apps. When people heard the word “Google,” they simply thought of it as a massive online search engine. Data collection at that point only involved gathering information on what people were searching for to improve relevance. In the early 2000s, Google AdWords was introduced and started tracking user interactions with ads for similar purposes. Later on, other services like Gmail and Google Analytics were created, and specific data collection processes followed.
But it wasn’t until Google paired up with Android that data collection ramped up. Because Google could access and track new data points from mobile devices, it could now assess metrics like location, device interactions, and other sensitive information.
What Is Google’s My Activity?
However, not all this data is for Google’s eyes only, as Google users all have their own My Activity platform to view and manage their data. It essentially does exactly what it implies—documents your activity when you use any Google services or apps in one place. It’ll show you the YouTube videos you’ve watched if you’ve connected your Google account to the site, the websites you’ve visited, whether cooking sites or those with casino apps for mobile reviewed, the searches you’ve made, and much more.
Before you get too alarmed, it’s worth mentioning that you have control over this activity and can turn these tracking features off.
What Does Google Track?
If you’re logged in to your Google account and head over to myactivity.google.com, you’ll see three types of activity tracked: Web & App Activity, Timeline activity, and YouTube History. Web and app activity encompasses all the activity performed on Google-related apps and sites, Timeline lets you retroactively look through your location history, and YouTube History shows you the search queries you’ve used and logs the videos you’ve watched. You can choose to turn these Activity controls on or off and go even more granular by toggling certain aspects of those settings on and off as well. For example, you can continue to track your Chrome history and activity but turn voice and audio activity off.
The reason Google tracks all this activity is to help improve the user experience. By knowing what sort of results or media you’re looking for, it can better provide recommendations and more relevant ads and results based on that information. While this all seems noble and for a good cause, some users might feel uneasy about all that data being collected. After all, how are we so sure that data is kept safe? And is it only the items listed on My Activity being collected, or is there more? There’s potentially a scary amount of data being collected, especially if you didn’t previously know that opting out existed.
Google’s Data Logging on Android Devices
To up the ante on data collection, Android mobile devices collect even more data than computers. Considering that people go practically everywhere, including the bathroom, with their phones in their hands or pockets, there’s unlimited potential for data collection. If you can think of it, chances are Google will collect it. Your most accurate location, notification contents, apps you’re using, you name it. There’s also research to support that Android devices send around 1MB (1,000KB) of data to Google every 12 hours, compared with iOS sending Apple 52KB in that same time span.
Are There Privacy Concerns?
Google is a behemoth in the online world, so the company has the stressful and challenging task of protecting millions of users’ data—or else face some hefty consequences. Luckily, like all companies, there’s a privacy policy that outlines how Google uses this data. The reality is that Google is spying on all of us, but you can control the level to some extent. Google will never sell your data; it’ll only share data if you consent or if the government asks for it for legal reasons. If we’re honest, the company is pretty transparent about what it collects, as it lets users download their Google data and delete it whenever they want.Occasionally, you might get freaked out by how much Google knows about you. You might wonder how it knew you liked that flavour of cereal or how it found out you were trying to stay on top of your health. That’s all thanks to the guessing game that Google plays based on the information it gathers from your activity. While you may not have directly told it that you want more information about a certain item or brand, the algorithm will take your searches, content watched, and articles read, and make an educated assumption.
