Does Google Spy On You? Is Your Privacy At Risk In 2019

What is Google?

Google is the biggest and most popular search engine on the internet. It is involved in many businesses such as hardware, software and advertisement services. Also, google is quite prevalent in cloud computing and AI. The company stands with tech-giants like Facebook, apple, and amazon. 

What does it do?

Google is by far the most famous for its search engine services. That has been the backbone of the company's success. The website receives 5.4 billion searches each day. And covers 92.62% market share. The stats are just a signal of big monopoly and a hint for google spy. How does Google manage to sustain this big number and make money? The answer is Surveillance Capitalism

What is Surveillance Capitalism?

As the name suggests its a capitalization of surveillance. That means this company track every bit of your data and sells it to be exploited by corporations. Isn't that illegal? No, not according to laws that are molded to benefits this big corporation. They know everything from your favorite essential oil to your best shopping site. You may not keep track of your behavior on the internet. But Google certainly does and spy on you. 

You can download all your data.

If you want you can download all you data this includes google drive, bookmarks, photos and a dozen more. This data is stored in a Google server. It's great from the point of convenience but frightening for your privacy. Google stores everything in its infinite space of servers. Not just it keeps the data. But they never delete it. I mean they keep your files forever. 

Which data Google keeps forever. 

When you browse you google activity and look for data which google has saved. You will hit a great surprise. When I did the same I was frightening. Because google had my 2013 eBay and Amazon purchases. Just chilling around in their servers. And it was just not Amazon or eBay. My flight tickets, restaurant booking, and even dentist appointment. Sounds scary! It gets even worse.

Because a lot of data about flights and purchases are not made through google. I literally typed the URL and made purchases. So there is no space for cookies and tracking. But still, a lot of purchases that I directly did through URL were present in my activity account. This further adds to point that google spy on you

I further investigate this topic. I read multiple forums and mail a couple of people from google. The answer to my question was very mixed and looks not so accurate. Some on the forum suggest that Chrome as a browser is tracking your accounts. Which goes directly against its policy. And others from google gave a different explanation. They suggest that Google was able to retrieve that data because you have received those confirmation mails of your purchases on your Gmail. So the next time you see google is remembering you about your flight. It is not doing to serve you but to exploit your data. 

location with searches

Another surprising thing which I encountered was that google has saved all my searches with the location. They had searches that I made on Google years before with the location. If you are shopping from amazon inside Starbucks. Remember Google is taking note of that. If you are ordering medicine from you house. Remember Google is taking note of that. 

How does It harm Me? 

You may ask How does It harm Me if google knows what I search and from Where? Google is exploiting you with the data they have. Even if you opt-out they still track your data. They are not looking to provide you services but capitalize on your data for their profit shares. If you search for diseases on google. And visit near a medical store It will start showing you ads related to diseases you have searched for.

Google is eating data and becoming powerful. They have a certain influence even on government. There could be a good chance that the government is also involved in this activity. So if the government is involved in this dirty business for short-term gains this can turn-out ugly for many of us. Because we would be helpless and can't do anything about our privacy. This is the problem. They don't delete you searches and location ever. Google will Spy and keep your data until a storm comes and wipe its headquarter. They even have a policy in which they could share data with the government. So Now the government just not only know your Social Security Number but also your Facebook likes and dislikes. Your political and religious beliefs. And this is harmful. 

Google News Article

If you read google news like many other millions you need to reconsider your choice. Google News is a propaganda machine that feeds you what you like. It uses an algorithm that measures every second you spend on different types of articles. So the next time you see your personalized feed in google news. Remember It's just propaganda. If you continue to consume such news they will have conclusive evidence of your beliefs in politics, tech or entertainment. it’s frightening when you see for yourself

The Google Spy In Your House

Every command you give to your virtual assistant is being heard by many others. Google mini is saving everything just not your commands like "What's the time" but also you children's likes and dislikes. Google claims that they only save the recording when you command something.  But that's not true according to many.

A big sect of audience believes that google listens your talk 24x7. Google does not save data directly like other services but directly transit it to their servers. That means you'll never know if they have your data or not. Because they are saving and syncing the data live. Think of it like Netflix you are streaming a video you don't have the file in your local machine. So google is live streaming your voice assistant data which is connected to WiFi and once they received the data they save it and share it with government and big corporations. And remember they will keep this information forever. Even if you have said happy birthday to your friend in 2014 and you have forgotten. But Google hasn't, It knows exactly what you said on which date and time. So every word you speak is being recorded 24x7 that's google for you. 

The Experiment "does google spy on you"

With so many different opinions and thoughts. I decided to experiment with this and tell the truth does google spy on you. So I took 2 Android phones both do not have internet but one has a sim and other on airplane mode. I went to the Hospital and the Cafe and at last School. Having both phones in my pocket. When I came home I was surprised by the results.

I connected both the phones through WiFi but also had a data filter device attached to the WiFi. The result was shocking. For the first phone which had sim shared each location of mine with google server. Not just that It also shared the time I spend on that location. Even though my location was Off. Scary! wait for more. When I enable my second phone which was on an airplane mode share exactly if not more data about my location. It shared which cafe I went to and how much time I spend. My every move was watched by Google. This experiment proved that you are a product for google, not customers.

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