We’ve all heard people say that Google and Facebook pretty much “own” all of us — but few of us have paused to consider what this sort of statement actually means, and whether or not it’s really that hyperbolic.
Technical consultant and web developer Dylan Curran recently shared some unsettling insights into exactly how much user information Google possesses, and the results might make you a wee bit paranoid.
Want to freak yourself out? I’m gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
First, Curran points out that Google keeps track of every single one of your locations every time you turn on your phone.
1. https://t.co/1z255Zt1zf Google stores your location (if you have it turned on) every time you turn on your phone, and you can see a timeline from the first day you started using Google on your phone
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
If you’re skeptical, take a gander at the Google map of Dylan’s movements.
2. This is every place I have been in the last twelve months in Ireland, going in so far as the time of day I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one pic.twitter.com/I1kB1vwntT
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Google also stores the entirety of your search history, even if you’ve cleared it. The only way to truly, effectively clear your browser history is to do it on every single one of your devices.
3. https://t.co/qFCgY6QLN5 Google stores search history across all your devices on a separate database, so even if you delete your search history and phone history, Google STILL stores everything until you go in and delete everything, and you have to do this on all devices
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Google also apparently creates an “advertisement profile” based on your information — which, bizarrely enough, includes your possible weight.
And if you’re using any apps or extensions, don’t worry: Google is storing up that information, too. (Including who you talk to on Facebook, and what time you go to sleep at night.)
5. Google stores information on every app and extension you use, how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with (who do you talk to on facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep at) https://t.co/RJeRlXhtdq
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Curran says that Google allows users to download their data, which is how he became privy to all of this information. But, it’s not a simple undertaking, either: the file was apparently 5.5GB, which equates to about 3,000,000 word documents.
7. Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you, I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB BIG, which is roughly 3 MILLION Word documents https://t.co/3Na4FxjNXk
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
All of your text and audio messages are also stored in this absurdly large file.
11. This includes every message you’ve ever sent or been sent, every file you’ve ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you’ve ever sent or been sent pic.twitter.com/H8ng7bcyod
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Facebook stores things it believes users might be interested in based on their profiles, pages they’ve liked, and what appears in comments/messages between friends.
12. Facebook also stores what it think you might be interested in based off the things you’ve liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic ‘Girl’) pic.twitter.com/fqKiNlfATO
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
(LOL at Dylan’s #1 interest being “frozen yogurt.”)
Google also stores all the applications you’ve ever connected to with your Facebook account, which contributes to their profiling of your potential interests.
15. And they store all the applications you’ve ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I’m 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… pic.twitter.com/bkXruVZxLP
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Curran also included a breakdown of how Google obtains all of your information.
20. I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information pic.twitter.com/mPAbyh1I9k
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
The entire 33-tweet thread is worth a full read — if only to fully grasp just how compromised all of your data really is.
As Curran writes in one tweet, “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 f*ck it I want to watch cute dog videos.”
Honestly, it’s enough to have me considering pulling a Ron Swanson and fully going off the grid.