See (at Least Some) of the Data Google Collects About You
September 10, 2019
This SGT Report headline may not be strictly true, but the write-up is interesting nevertheless. They claim, “Google’s File on You is 10 Times Bigger than Facebook’s—Here’s How to View It.” Keep in mind that SGT Report can publish some interesting and often difficult to verify information.
The article extrapolates its figure from the experience of one developer:
“Curious about just how much of his data Google had, web developer Dylan Curran says he downloaded his Google data file, which is offered by the company in a hub called ‘My Account.’ This hub was created in 2015, along with a tool called ‘My Activity.’ The report issued is similar to the one Facebook delivers to its users upon request. Whether or not these reports are comprehensive is still up in the air, but Curran says his was 5.5 GB, which is almost ten times larger than the one Facebook offered him. The amount and type of data in his file, Mr. Curran says, suggests Google is not only constantly tracking our online movements but may also be monitoring our physical locations.
We noted:
“Curran’s Google report contained an incredible amount documentation on his web activity, going back over a decade. But perhaps more importantly, Google had also been tracking his real-life movements via his smartphone device or tablet. This included fairly random places he’d frequented, many of the foreign countries and cities he visited, the bars and restaurants he went to while in these countries, the amount of time he spent there, and even the path he took to get there and back.”
Though we cannot tell whether this much Google-gathered data is typical, it is true big tech companies gobble up a lot of user data. It is also clear that one should take the promises of Chrome’s “incognito mode” with a grain of salt. Concerned readers may want to navigate to the links the article shares for taking some control over this data: Here Google account holders can turn off location tracking and other features of Google apps; at this link you can set advertising preferences; and this is how to download that Google data file like Curran did.
We are not sure Google is really collecting 10 times more data than Facebook, but how one’s personal data is being collected and used online does warrant attention.
Cynthia Murrell, September 10, 2019
Google Cookies: Dancing Around
August 28, 2019
In my Google Version 2: The Calculating Predator, I summarized a number of Google innovations which embed tracking. One of the more interesting approaches was for Google to become the Internet; that is, when you run a query, you are accessing the Internet as it exists within Google. (If you want more information, write benkent2020 @ yahoo dot com. I sell a set of “fair copies” of these original books I submitted to a now defunct publisher in Brexitland. There are some minor typos and a dropped graphic or two, but the info is there.)
I wrote the Google monographs in 2003 to 2008.
The tracking functions, the walled garden, the Google version of the Internet — each of these were in place more than 15 years ago. Therefore, any modification of Google’s cookies polices and the associated technology like Ramanathan Guha’s and Alon Halevy’s innovations is a very big job. Given the present state of the Google architecture, I am not sure that the existing crew of 100,000 plus could make such modifications without having many Google services break. “Services”, however, are not what users experience. The services are the internal operations that ensure ads get displayed, the click stream data are collected, the internal components have access to fresh user behavior data, and the public facing outputs like search results, “did you mean”, and even the “I’m feeling lucky” are in line with what Google’s financial demands require. Remember: Ads have to be displayed and users induced to click on them to make the Yahoo-GoTo-Overture inspired system function.
Cookies, including the special DoubleClick variety and the garden variety “expire a long time in the future” type are important to the Google system. If you can’t find content in an index, the reason may be that the site’s content is no longer generating clicks. Indexing becomes more important with each passing day. How does one control costs? Well, those cookies and beacons are helpful. No signals of click love, then less frequent or zero indexing. Thus, indexing costs can be managed which is almost impossible if a spider just follows links, changed content, and new information. Where is an index to the content on “beat sites” like Beatstars.com? Answer: The content is not indexed if our recent test queries are accurate. (I know, “What’s beat content? Not in this write up, gentle reader, not in this write up.)
Against this background I want to call your attention to “Deconstructing Google’s Excuses on Tracking Protection.” The write up is a reasonable analysis of Google saying that it wants to be more respectful of user’s privacy.
DarkCyber thought the summary of cookies was good. Here’s the passage we circled:
Our high-level points are:
1) Cookie blocking does not undermine web privacy. Google’s claim to the contrary is privacy gas lighting.
2) There is little trustworthy evidence on the comparative value of tracking-based advertising.
3) Google has not devised an innovative way to balance privacy and advertising; it is latching onto prior approaches that it previously disclaimed as impractical.
4) Google is attempting a punt to the web standardization process, which will at best result in years of delay.
My concern is that this type of write up does not specifically state what Google is doing. The use of the phrase “gas lighting” and the invocation of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism are very trendy.
Unfortunately, plain talk is needed. With Google search the primary conduit of what is “important”, the game is no longer one of cookies.
Exactly what can a government or a committee do to address more than 15 years of engineering specifically designed to track people, cluster individuals into groups, predict what the majority of those in a statistically valid cluster want, and make sense of individual user behavior cues?
One step may be that writers and analysts adopt a more direct, blunt way of explaining Google/DoubleClick tracking. The reason individuals do not speak out is that there is what I call “Google fright”. It affects news release services. It affects analysts. It affects “real journalists.” It affects Google’s would be government watch dogs.
Who doesn’t want a Google mouse pad or T shirt? Darned few. Fear of Google may be a factor to consider when reading about DarkCyber’s favorite ad supported, Web search system.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2019
A Partial Look: Data Discovery Service for Anyone
July 18, 2019
F-Secure has made available a Data Discovery Portal. The idea is that a curious person (not anyone on the DarkCyber team but one of our contractors will be beavering away today) can “find out what information you have given to the tech giants over the years.” Pick a social media service — for example, Apple — and this is what you see:
A curious person plugs in the Apple ID information and F-Secure obtains and displays the “data.” If one works through the services for which F-Secure offers this data discovery service, the curious user will have provided some interesting data to F-Secure.
Sound like a good idea? You can try it yourself at this F-Secure link.
F-Secure operates from Finland and was founded in 1988.
Do you trust the Finnish anti virus wizards with your user names and passwords to your social media accounts?
Are the data displayed by F-Secure comprehensive? Filtered? Accurate?
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2019
Qwant Pitches Map Privacy
July 14, 2019
Digital maps are an indispensable tool, especially if you ceaselessly use a GPS. While digital maps are accurate, fast, and reliable, the also track and store user information. One semi-logical argument is that if you have nothing to hide, what is the big deal about information being stored. On the other hand, you should have the right to protect your privacy whether or not you have anything to hide. Qwant Maps believes in preserving user privacy, so it is an open source and privacy-preserving map tool. Qwant Maps was created so users have exclusive control over their geolocated data.
Qwant Maps built its tool on OpenStreetMap, a free and collaborative geographical database supported by more than one million voluntary contributors. OpenStreetMap is not an out-of-the box solution and requires some tech savviness to use it. Qwant Maps’s team developed a geoparsing engine to make OpenStreetMap more user friendly.
“To overcome these shortcomings and to meet the needs of most of people, Qwant Maps has developed — or participated to the development — its own software components. The will of Qwant Maps is to create a virtuous synergy between Qwant Maps and OpenStreetMap. Thus Qwant Maps uses OpenStreetMap data to generate its own vector tiles, its own base map, its own web APIs. Also Qwant Maps feeds its geoparsing web service as well as its online applications thanks to OpenStreetMap data.”
All of the code for both the Qwant Maps geosparsing tool and OpenStreetMap are open source. Qwant Maps also uses Mimirsbrunn as its search engine, Kartotherian as a visual rendering tool based on vector tiles, and Idunn is used to highlight all information on the tiles.
Whitney Grace, July 5, 2019
Facebook: Fine and a Reminder of Ozymandius?
July 13, 2019
I just wanted to document that Facebook will have to pay a fine. Well. allegedly. On the other hand, the rumored penalty evokes the trunkless legs of stone. Ozymandius time in Silicon Valley. For details, navigate to “Facebook Reportedly Fined $5B over Cambridge Analytica Fiasco.” No high flier wants to wear a t shirt with the word “fiasco” stenciled in red. Perhaps if it were paired with the Nike Betsy Ross shoes and “fiasco” spelled “phiasco”, the label could be trendy. The t shirt would collect likes like a hamburger gathers flies at a picnic on a 90 degree day in Mountain View. I noted this statement in the write up:
The FTC approved the settlement in a 3-to-2 vote with Republican commissioners in favor and Democrats opposing, according to Wall Street Journal sources. The arrangement and further details have yet to be confirmed publicly, and any agreement will still have to be reviewed by the Department of Justice.
Yep, some money, just a bit tardy.
Stephen E Arnold, July 13, 2019
Targeting 101: Disabling Google and Finding Software Alternatives
June 30, 2019
I read “Completely Block Google and Its Services.” If you are concerned about Google’s data policies, you may want to read the article and follow the instructions in the pihole-google.txt file. It appears that there are more than 7,000 services which Google uses to obtain one’s personal information.
Is this a surprise? No, what’s interesting is that disabling items one by one in an Android device is not going to do the job. I particularly liked the listing of DoubleClick add ons. Here’s a sampling of the more than two dozen items:
analytics.txt
firebase.txt
fonts.txt
mail.txt
products.txt
Some readers of DarkCyber may find the DoubleClick patents interesting. An overview of the cookie method appears in “Method and Apparatus for Transaction Tracking Over a Computer Network.” You can locate the document at this link. DoubleClick has other interesting inventions as well. I covered more of these in my 2003 The Google Legacy and the follow-up monograph, Google Version 2. I am not returning to the Museum of Googzilla.
Once Google has been removed from your Android device, you may want to find replacement for the Google Play and Google provided apps. You can find a useful list in “The Complete List of Alternatives to All Google Products.” The “all” makes me nervous because DarkCyber has heard rumors than not even Google has a list which is comprehensive. Like the personnel data the US government once requested, that’s just too difficult. Creating such a list is impossible because once the list has been whipped up, it might leak. Google still tries to be as secretive as possible, but its track record has changed as the firm has aged.
Stephen E Arnold, June 30, 2019
Alexa: Big Brother and Big Sister
June 2, 2019
The younger generations live their lives online, so it is surprising when one shows concern about privacy. The Guardian’s Comedic journalist Tim Dowling wrote about his son’s total dislike for Amazon’s Alexa in, “Tim Dowling: Two Alexas Have Moved In, And They’re Terrifying.” Smart speakers are Big Brother’s newest tool, because it is always listening.
Dowling was sent two free Alexa’s to review for his column and coerced his son into setting them up in his home. What is even funnier is that they are used Alexas and one of them had googly eyes, so one is “always watching.” The son in question is nineteen years old, but is scared of Alexa. Dowling and his offspring do not like Alexa, because she is listening. At first, it is charming to have questions answered instantaneously, but it quickly turns when they nearly avoid buying an expensive laptop. They do ask Alexa, how many people are spying on them right then, but the speaker did not known the answer. Dowling’s eldest child, however, was quite keen on the speakers and had one tell him the latest football scores (that is soccer for the US).
It got worse for the youngest one when Dowling had to leave him alone in the house with the two Alexas:
“ ‘Walk the dog, feed the cat, don’t say ‘Alexa’, and you’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘Great,’ he says.
Some hours later, I receive an email informing me that I will not be required to write about Alexa after all. A few minutes after that, I receive an apology from the youngest one, telling me he had to unplug both Alexas: they had started talking to each other.”
What do Alexas discuss? They probably ceaselessly ask one another to keep repeating, because they could not quite get what the other is saying. Sure, smart speakers are fun. They are a voice activated Google and radio, but they are always listening. Listening to hear the next command or reporting it to the government.
Whitney Grace, June 2, 2019
Facebook Says Privacy. Tim Cook Explains Privacy
May 5, 2019
Apple continues to build out its privacy platform. “Apple CEO Tim Cook Slams Peeping Tom Websites for Intruding onto Users’ Privacy, Insists He Doesn’t Want Customers Looking at Their iPhones Too Much and Addresses Concerns That Kids Are Addicted to Devices” presents some of the suggestions and observations likely to find their way into Apple’s marketing of its products and services. (There was no mention of the nagging to sign into Apple’s messaging service or the annoyance of pleading with customers to use the Apple cloud storage service. Intrusive. You betcha.)
In an interview with a US television “real news” reporter, Mr. Cook offered one quite interesting observations; to wit:
Companies that collection people’s data know a lot more about you than someone looking in the window of your home. (Peeping Toms are bad, very bad.)
The article in the Daily Mail linked Mr. Cook’s comments about privacy to one of his previous statements:
Cook previously denounced Facebook and other tech companies for hoarding ‘industrial’ amounts of users’ private data during a privacy conference at the European Parliament in Brussels in October [2018].
How does Mr. Cook some companies’ “hoarding” of data? The answer:
Industrial scale.
One may want to recall that Facebook’s privacy woes have not had a significant impact on the firm’s financial performance. Mr. Cook may be talking privacy, but the reality is that in America, financial performance may be more important in some circles.
Oracle once asserted that in search and retrieval security matters. Oracle’s bet on enterprise search security did not cause competitors much, if any, friction. Apple’s “bet” on privacy will be interesting to observe.
Stephen E Arnold, May 5, 2019
Google and Kiddie Data Allegations
April 15, 2019
I read a compelling essay published in TribLive. The title? “Protect Kids from Google Predators.” The short write up does a good job of identifying the basic mechanism for collecting information about students. Here’s a passage I noted:
Google now has 80 million educators and students around the world using G Suite for Education, 40 million students and teachers in Google Classroom and 30 million more using Google Chromebooks inside and outside the classroom.
The data collection is ubiquitous, just like other Google functions. These intercept and logging functions are baked into the system. As Google staff turns over, the specifics of some of these fundamental plumbing and utility services are like services buried in Windows 10 and Word. Fish don’t understand water; users don’t understand a non-Google environment.
The write up adds:
K-12 children in tens of thousands of schools began the academic year by lining up at the library to create Gmail accounts and Google Classroom logins without parental notification or permission. There’s no escape: No Google, no access. No access, no education. “Hell, some of the teachers don’t even teach the kids,” one parent complained to me. Instead, they “watch videos on Canvas or on their Chromebooks. Canvas (by Instructure) is one of myriad “learning management systems” that stores students’ grades, homework assignments, videos, quizzes and tests — all integrated with almighty, all-powerful, omniscient Google. Google apps such as ClassDojo collect intimate behavioral data and long-term psychological profiles encompassing family information, personal messages, photographs and voice notes. The collection of such data is a nanny state nightmare in the making, as a new Pioneer Institute report on “social, emotional learning” software and assessments outlined this month. Meanwhile, preschoolers are being trained to flash “Clever Badges” with QR codes in front of their Google Chromebook webcams. These badges “seamlessly” log them into Google World and all its apps without all the “stress” of remembering passwords. Addicted toddlers are being indoctrinated into the screen time culture without learning how to exercise autonomy over their own data.
DarkCyber believes that more attention to this Google “feature” may be warranted. I know an apology from Google may be forthcoming, but perhaps parents are tiring of apologies and having their children tracked and their privacy compromised?
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2019
Virtual Private Networks: Is Free Good?
April 10, 2019
VPNs are the new wonder tool in Internet security and privacy. Want one? Download Opera.
DarkCyber has noted that Vladimir Putin is not a fan of digital tunneling. In our weekly news program, we have mentioned that some VPNs are not providing the security the user wants. In some enforcement circles, use of a VPN is a red flag.
It seems logical to assume that anything free on the Internet comes with a catch. Free VPNs come with with a special extra. Tech Radar explores free VPNs in, “Four Ways That A Free VPN Can Profit From Its Users.”
Paid VPNs manage to stay on top of their game by having their users pay a monthly subscription fee. Free VPNS do offer comparable services, but in order to do that they have to make money somehow. There are four ways free VPNs can make a profit from their users. The first one is called a “gateway” VPN, because it is a free trial or tier associated with a paid VPN The hope is that the trial users will become monthly subscribers when they discover the free version’s limitations, such as low bandwidth.
Another alternative involves free VPN selling information about your Internet habits. This information would usually be collected by ISPs, but the VPN blocks them. ISPs sell the information to the highest bidder, but the VPNs do that instead. Free VPNs can also share and reroute bandwidth amongst its various users:
“Yet with one free VPN provider, HolaVPN, this is exactly what happened. HolaVPN doesn’t have its own network of servers, but effectively crowd sources, with everyone using the service providing them bandwidth – not only for the free HolaVPN offering, but also for a related paid product known as Luminati. In addition, your device could become the exit node for another user’s activity, making you potentially liable for their actions.”
Then there is the tried and true method of selling advertising on the VPN network, including targeted ads. The VPN might block the ISPs from collection information, but the VPN collects it and makes a profit from the user’s information.
Yep, free.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2019
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