{"id":108466,"date":"2018-04-09T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=108466"},"modified":"2018-04-08T08:59:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T07:59:48","slug":"are-you-ready-here-is-all-the-data-facebook-and-google-have-on-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/04\/are-you-ready-here-is-all-the-data-facebook-and-google-have-on-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Ready? Here Is All the Data Facebook and Google Have on You"},"content":{"rendered":"

The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A slice of the data that Facebook keeps on the author: \u2018This information has millions of nefarious uses.\u2019 Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Mar 2018 – <\/em>Want to freak yourself out? I\u2019m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook<\/a> and Google store about you without you even realising it.<\/p>\n

Google knows where you\u2019ve been<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you\u2019ve been from the very first day you started using Google<\/a> on your phone.<\/p>\n

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com\/maps\/timeline?\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You can see the time of day that I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one.<\/p>\n

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\u2018A Google map of every place I\u2019ve been in Ireland this year.\u2019 Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

Google knows everything you\u2019ve ever searched \u2013 and deleted<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com\/myactivity<\/a><\/p>\n

Google has an advertisement profile of you <\/strong><\/p>\n

Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.<\/p>\n

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com\/settings\/ads\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Google knows all the apps you use <\/strong><\/p>\n

Google stores information on every app and extension you use. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who you talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.<\/p>\n

Click on this link to see your own data: security.google.com\/settings\/secur\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Google has all of your YouTube history <\/strong><\/p>\n

Google stores all <\/em>of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you\u2019re going to be a parent soon, if you\u2019re a conservative, if you\u2019re a progressive, if you\u2019re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you\u2019re feeling depressed or suicidal, if you\u2019re anorexic \u2026<\/p>\n

Click on this link to see your own data: youtube.com\/feed\/history\/s\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I\u2019ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big<\/em>, which is roughly 3m Word documents.<\/p>\n

Manage to gain access to someone\u2019s Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you\u2019ve taken on your phone, the businesses you\u2019ve bought from, the products you\u2019ve bought through Google \u2026<\/p>\n

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you\u2019ve purchased, the Google groups you\u2019re in, the websites you\u2019ve created, the phones you\u2019ve owned, the pages you\u2019ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day \u2026<\/p>\n

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com\/takeout<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook has reams and reams of data on you, too<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.<\/p>\n

This includes every message you\u2019ve ever sent or been sent, every file you\u2019ve ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you\u2019ve ever sent or been sent.<\/p>\n

Click here to see your data: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/help\/131112897028467<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2018A snapshot of the data Facebook has saved on me.\u2019 Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

Facebook stores everything from your stickers to your login location<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook also stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you\u2019ve liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic \u201cgirl\u201d).<\/p>\n

Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you\u2019ve ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It\u2019s just a joke at this stage).<\/p>\n

They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.<\/p>\n

And they store all the applications you\u2019ve ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I\u2019m interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.<\/p>\n

(Side note, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just<\/em> the privacy options with 16 different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when you install Windows 10)<\/p>\n

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Privacy options in Windows 10. Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

They can access your webcam and microphone <\/strong><\/p>\n

The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the different ways Google gets your data <\/strong><\/p>\n

I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.<\/p>\n

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\u2018My Google Takeout document.\u2019 Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

Here\u2019s the search history document, which has 90,000 different entries, even showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to show how much damage this information can do).<\/p>\n

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\u2018My search history document has 90,000 different entries.\u2019 Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

Google knows which events you attended, and when <\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my Google Calendar broken down, showing all the events I\u2019ve ever added, whether I actually attended them, and what time I attended them at (this part is when I went for an interview for a marketing job, and what time I arrived).<\/p>\n

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\u2018Here is my Google calendar showing a job interview I attended.\u2019 Photograph: Dylan Curran<\/p><\/div>\n

And Google has information you deleted <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly<\/em> deleted including my r\u00e9sum\u00e9, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I\u2019ve ever made, and even my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.<\/p>\n

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Google can know your workout routine <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I\u2019ve ever taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I\u2019ve recorded any meditation\/yoga\/workouts I\u2019ve done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit\u2019s permissions).<\/p>\n

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And they have years\u2019 worth of photos <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is all the photos ever taken with my phone, broken down by year, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos<\/p>\n

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Google has every email you ever sent <\/strong><\/p>\n

Every email I\u2019ve ever sent, that\u2019s been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.<\/p>\n

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And there is more <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll just do a short summary of what\u2019s in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.<\/p>\n

First, every Google Ad I\u2019ve ever viewed or clicked on, every app I\u2019ve ever launched or used and when I did it, every website I\u2019ve ever visited and what time I did it at, and every app I\u2019ve ever installed or searched for.<\/p>\n

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\u2018They have every single Google search I\u2019ve made since 2009.\u2019<\/p><\/div>\n

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They also have every image I\u2019ve ever searched for and saved, every location I\u2019ve ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I\u2019ve ever searched for or read, and every single Google search<\/em> I\u2019ve made since 2009. And then finally, every YouTube video I\u2019ve ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.<\/p>\n

This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say you\u2019re not a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and you\u2019re suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone\u2019s Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras\/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because \u2013 to hell with it! \u2013 I want to watch cute dog videos.<\/p>\n