Google VS. Privacy

We all understand that Google knows a lot, but have you considered how much they know about you and your personal habits?
It’s hard to imagine navigating urban or suburban life without the help of Google Maps these days. It’s become such a habit, and the expectation that we will be able to navigate from point A to point B without planning ahead of time, that the concept of “getting lost” rarely happens in modern, connected life anymore.
However, many of us use this service with little inhibition without actually thinking about what’s going on in the backend. It’s an old adage that “if the product you’re using is free, it’s likely that you are the product”, and when it comes the location data amassed by your everyday movements, Google Maps is most certainly putting that to use. Even though the mega-company’s motto is “don’t be evil”, that doesn’t preclude Google from collecting and storing the data for everywhere you visit and go with your location services turned on.
Users shouldn’t really be surprised by this, and while some may find the ethics of this questionable, there are some perks to Google knowing where you go and how you get there. They can remember your preferences, frequently visited places, and perhaps offer you deals and offers for places you normally visit or things you usually search for. Also, in most cases it’s unlikely that Google will do something nefarious with your data. However, it’s never a certainty that your data won’t find its way into the hands of someone who has less than noble aims for your data.
Indeed, users might be quite surprised to learn just how granular the data that Google collects about us is. A new Google Maps feature called Your Timeline allows you to see every place you’ve ever visited while carrying your phone with location services on. A lot of people don’t realize that location services are tracking their movements in the background, so even if you’re not being given directions by Google it knows where you’re going regardless. In some cases this can be wildly interesting; seeing all the places you went on a random Tuesday last fall in San Francisco can be like stepping into a very accurate time machine. In other cases, it can feel a bit creepy.
Indeed, there are a lot of reasons why you might not want Google to know your every move. You can opt out of Google tracking your footprints, but what many people don’t realize is that they are – by default – opted in. This is one of the tricky things about the modern information economy: companies often assume that you are willing to share all your information in exchange for their service, but don’t necessarily make it explicit that they are operating on that assumption. For example, when Google rolled out its new Timeline feature last year, users were opted in by default. It’s up to diligent users to frequently check on their security and privacy settings when dealing with these apps as companies will generally err on the side of oversharing.
According to Google, your location history “creates a private map of where you go with your signed-in devices in order to provide improved map searches, commute routes, and more”. While they describe it as “private,” that means it’s between you and Google. If you feel uneasy about Google’s holding on to this data via your location history, here’s a look at how you can disable it. Keep in mind that you’ll have to do this across all the devices if they’re not linked. But if your devices are linked, Google offers a streamlined way to manage your privacy settings.
Go to “My Account” page when logged into your Google account. Under the “Personal info & privacy” section, choose “Activity Controls.” Scroll down to “Places you go” and click “pause”. This will cease Google tracking your movements. There are other options here to personalize your privacy settings, but keep in mind that if you use more than one Google account, you will have to repeat this step when logged into each of them.

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