It's easy to understand why privacy advocates and policymakers are sounding alarms about online privacy in general – and singling out Google in particular.
If you use Google's search engine, Google knows what you searched for as well as your activity on partner Web sites that use its ad services. Technically, of course, Google doesn't know anything about you. But it stores tremendous amounts of data about you and your activities on its servers, from the content you create to the searches you perform, the Web sites you visit and the ads you click.
The more Google knows about you, the more it can match you to an advertiser who thinks you are an ideal customer. Advertisers are willing to pay more for ads served to ideal potential customers. For instance, airlines want to target people who love to travel. Children's clothing makers want to target parents. Want to find out all the things Google knows about you? Here are 6 links that will show you some of the data Google has about you.
1. Find out how Google sees you
Google attempts to create a basic profile of you, your age, gender, interests. They use this data to serve you relevant ads. You can review how Google sees you here:
https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
2. Find out your location history
If you use Android, your mobile device may be sending your location as well as velocity data to Google. You can see your entire location history and export it here:
https://maps.google.com/locationhistory
3. Find out your entire Google Search history
Google saves every single search you have ever done. On top of that, they record every Google ad you have clicked on. This log is available to you here:
4. Find out every device that has accessed your Google account
If you worry that someone else might be using your account, you can find a list of all devices that have accessed your Google account, their IP address and approximate location here:
https://security.google.com/settings/security/activity
5. Find out all the apps and extensions that are accessing your Google data
This is a list of all the apps that have any type of access to your data. You can see the exact type of permissions granted to the app and revoke access to your data here:
https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions
6. Export all of your data out of Google
Google lets you export all your data: bookmarks, emails, contacts, drive files, profile info, your youtube videos, photos and more here:
https://www.google.com/takeout
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