Do you know what Google knows about you?
By Tim Barsness | November 9, 2009
Google has recently released its dashboard which lists some of the information associated with your Google account. It gave me a pretty good idea of what they knew about me, and reminded me of a few things. The dashboard can also be used to modify privacy settings for things you’d rather they didn’t know or store about you. Here’s what’s on my account:
- Gmail – I don’t use gmail on my main google account heavily, but my main google account may be linked to other gmail accounts I do use
- Alerts – the Google alerts I have are topics I’d like to be notified of frequently and thus are important to me
- Calendar – Everything I’ve done since I started using their calendar. Rough frequency, duration, time and location of meetings
- Contacts – Everyone I know, their phone numbers, email addresses and some physical addresses
- Docs – Most of the documents and spreadsheets I’ve written in the last year and a half
- Finance – The approximate value of my stock portfolio (correlates with net worth), as well as my positions on securities as well as when positions changed
- iGoogle – Page is hit every time you start up your browsers, as well as topics that are most important to you
- Profile – What I think people should know about me
- Reader – Similar to alerts, but more content with slightly less importance, this include all of the articles you’ve read and could include how much time you spent reading each and what links were clicked
- Talk – Any instant message conversations you have through gChat
- Voice - Phone calls I’ve dialed, received, missed and ignored; call frequency; call duration; SMS messages; and possible transcription of recorded conversations
- Web History – What I search for online, when I search, which links I click on, which ads I click on, the amount of time I spend on searched pages (if I return to the google search results page)
- YouTube – What I’m watching and how long I watch
Other products which haven’t made it into the dashboard yet
- Analytics – How much traffic websites I own get, what viewers look at on them, where they come from, where they leave to, how long they look at all of the content I put out there. Google Analytics also associates websites I own with me
- Checkout – What I’m buying, where I’m buying it from, product descriptions and how much I am spending
- App Engine – Any applications I’ve written
- FeedBurner – Similar to Google Analytics for my RSS feeds
- Base – Merchant side – what products I’m offering and which ones are most popular. Consumer side – what products I am looking for, and the approximate price range I am looking for them in
- Groups – Groups I am interested in and what I have to say about those groups
- Local Business Center – Everything about my local business
- Page Creator – My homepage online
- Webmaster Tools – Which content on my website I think is most important
- Subscribed Links – The information I think people should seen when looking for me, my website or my business
- Wave – Real time conversations I have
- Website Optimizer – How much time I spend optimizing my website
It is shocking to get a look at how much Google knows not only about my online presence and habits, but to see how they are seeping into and mining data from my physical, offline presence. The Google Dashboard really makes me think about what information I share with them and whether I want to continue this relationship or not.
For me, Google’s services are so useful and convenient that there is no way I would ever ween myself off of them entirely. For now, I’ll stick to what I’m up to while closely monitoring my dashboard to see what pops up.
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One Response to “Do you know what Google knows about you?”
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12:34 pm on November 12th, 2009
Sweet post! News to me, good to know.