Hows Does Facebook Know What Country You Are in?

Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to testify merely how much of your data the likes of Facebook and Google shop about you without y'all even realising it.

Google knows where you lot've been

Google stores your location (if you lot accept location tracking turned on) every time you lot plough on your phone. You tin can see a timeline of where you've been from the very first solar day yous started using Google on your phone.

Click on this link to run into your own information: google.com/maps/timeline?…

Here is every identify I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You tin see the fourth dimension of twenty-four hours that I was in the location and how long information technology took me to go to that location from my previous one.

'A Google map of every place I've been in Ireland this year.' Photograph: Dylan Curran

Google knows everything you've ever searched – and deleted

Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if y'all delete your search history and telephone history on one device, it may still have information saved from other devices.

Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Google has an advertisement profile of y'all

Google creates an advertisement contour based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in i 24-hour interval?) and income.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/settings/ads/

Google knows all the apps yous utilise

Google stores information on every app and extension y'all use. They know how often you utilize them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who yous talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.

Click on this link to see your ain data: security.google.com/settings/secur…

Google has all of your YouTube history

Google stores all of your YouTube history, and then they probably know whether y'all're going to be a parent presently, if yous're a conservative, if you lot're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if y'all're anorexic …

Click on this link to come across your own data: youtube.com/feed/history/s…

The data Google has on you can fill millions of Discussion documents

Google offers an option to download all of the information it stores near you lot. I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you've taken on your telephone, the businesses you lot've bought from, the products you've bought through Google …

They also take data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books y'all've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites you've created, the phones y'all've endemic, the pages yous've shared, how many steps you walk in a day …

Click on this link to run into your own information: google.com/takeout

Facebook has reams and reams of data on you, too

Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.

This includes every message you've ever sent or been sent, every file you've e'er sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the sound messages you've ever sent or been sent.

Click here to see your data: https://world wide web.facebook.com/help/131112897028467

'A snapshot of the information Facebook has saved on me.' Photograph: Dylan Curran

Facebook stores everything from your stickers to your login location

Facebook also stores what it thinks you might exist interested in based off the things you've liked and what you and your friends talk nigh (I apparently like the topic "girl").

Somewhat pointlessly, they besides store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It'southward but a joke at this stage).

They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you lot logged in from, what fourth dimension, and from what device.

And they store all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook account, and so they tin can judge I'm interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was unmarried betwixt X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.

(Side note, if you have Windows ten installed, this is a moving picture of simply the privacy options with xvi different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when y'all install Windows ten)

Privacy options in Windows 10. Photo: Dylan Curran

They can access your webcam and microphone

The data they collect includes tracking where you lot are, what applications you accept installed, when you use them, what you utilize them for, access to your webcam and microphone at whatever fourth dimension, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you transport and receive, the files yous download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.

Here are some of the dissimilar ways Google gets your data

I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.

'My Google Takeout certificate.' Photograph: Dylan Curran

Here's the search history certificate, which has 90,000 dissimilar entries, even showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to evidence how much damage this information tin can do).

'My search history document has 90,000 different entries.' Photograph: Dylan Curran

Google knows which events you attended, and when

Here'south my Google Agenda broken down, showing all the events I've always 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).

'Here is my Google calendar showing a job interview I attended.' Photo: Dylan Curran

And Google has information you deleted

This is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly deleted including my résumé, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I've ever made, and fifty-fifty my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.

Google tin can know your workout routine

This is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I've always taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I've recorded any meditation/yoga/workouts I've done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit's permissions).

And they accept years' worth of photos

This is all the photos e'er taken with my phone, broken downward by year, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos

Google has every electronic mail y'all e'er sent

Every email I've ever sent, that's been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.

And there is more than

I'll just practice a short summary of what'south in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.

Kickoff, every Google Advert I've ever viewed or clicked on, every app I've always launched or used and when I did it, every website I've ever visited and what time I did it at, and every app I've always installed or searched for.

'They have every single Google search I've made since 2009.'

They besides accept every image I've e'er searched for and saved, every location I've ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I've ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I've made since 2009. And and then finally, every YouTube video I've ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.

This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say y'all're not a terrorist. And so how come you were googling Isis? Piece of work at Google and you're suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just await up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you take a chronological diary of everything that person has washed for the concluding 10 years.

This is ane of the craziest things about the modern historic period. We would never permit the authorities or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But nosotros just went ahead and did it ourselves because – to hell with information technology! – I want to watch cute canis familiaris videos.

A caption was corrected on 28 March 2018 to supercede "privacy options in Facebook" with "privacy options in Windows ten".

• Dylan Curran is a information consultant and web developer, who does all-encompassing research into spreading technical sensation and improving digital etiquette
• Sign upwardly for the Guardian US opinion e-mail
  

colburnhonval.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy