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The Insidiousness of Google

I didn’t realize all that Google was tracking on me simply because I have a Gmail email address & had purchased a domain some time ago.

So, I went into my account and discovered they auto turn on ALL the tracking on accounts!

I had to go into my account privacy & tracking to change and delete all the tracking history. (I “paused” the tracking, but then had to choose how often to delete tracking. What?)

They know where all I’ve been the last 30 days (and more in history), they still had my bank info. (had to disable GPay).

They had recent and history on ALL the You Tube videos I’ve watched.

Everything I do on my phone or device is tracked and stored in my main Google account!

I had to remove bank card info. (On Google Play I couldn’t even do that because they require you add another valid card to delete one!)

Google knows everything we do, everywhere we go, everything we buy, everyone we know, everything we watch, every app we use (and it’s info.).

Everything!

We should be alarmed. Are we?

I think we should remove Google from our lives.

Or can we simply not survive without it’s “toys” and convenience?

15 replies on “The Insidiousness of Google”

Anyone know of any smart phones not run by Apple, Google or Microsoft? The best my searches can find are 3G phones that are a few years old and cost a few hundred

I needed a quick reference on the Battle of Spion Kop, something I was willing to use Wikipedia, or whatever Google spit up for.

For the next six months, I was bombarded with pop ups trying to sell me Spion Kop.

For those unaware, it’s a hill in South Africa. It was the site of a battle during the Boer Wars.

I really don’t think Amazon had it for sale, despite what the ads were telling me.

… which kind of tells you that if that’s the best AI the wealthiest and most influential companies in the world can come up with, we don’t really have to be too terribly concerned about SkyNet being just around the corner … Yet.

BTW, I’m sure you know but some readers might not — “Spion Kop” is “Spy Hill” in Afrikaans and something a lot of people don’t know is Afrikaans is just a slang version of Flemish. Sort of like Mexican is to Spanish.

If I’d been there at that time I’d have fought with the Boers and been glad of the company. I love my Oom Paul tobacco pipe.

The “ledger” video of today explains how they examine your data and if something doesn’t exist for you to buy, it will be created. Also each person is “led” to options and ways of thinking about all sorts of stuff.

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Yes, but I’m more concerned about who wields those tools than the tools themselves. Djinn do not go back in their bottles and time is going to bring change and challenges relentlessly and inevitably.

This is why, or at least one of the many good reasons for conservatives and conservatism to keep society centered on “good” rather than just give up and let it slide into evil. The Noble Concepts need to be preserved and nurtured. If the true application of the idea of “Good Men and True” perishes much of great importance dies with it.

One time many years ago I had to interface with some FBI types. I was in their office and they had a framed print on the wall. It was a quote by Thomas Jefferson (I think, it was a long time ago and I’m paraphrasing here) and it said —

“Enforcing the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law serves neither.”

It impressed the hell out of me that those guys would display that prominently on their wall to remind them every day what their real mission is. So much so that I still remember it today. This is the kind of FBI field office that isn’t listed on the building directory in the lobby and not just anyone can walk in there so it wasn’t to impress visitors either.

That print was hung on the wall by Good Men and True to remind them every day to remain Good Men and True. (Of course this was under the “old” FBI, I have no idea if that office with that print hanging on the wall even exists today and I know those particular agents are retired.)

We need to be certain that our pool of Good Men and True remains deep and wide, then encourage those people to advance to positions where authority is wielded.

That is why John Adams said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It’s not so much that Google is tracking us, it’s what Google is tracking that’s scary.

It’s not surprising that Google would have credit card information, you have a commercial/retail relationship with Google. If you own an Android phone, use any sort of Android tablet or device etc. you’re in a legitimate commercial relationship with Google.

The online store where I buy my cigars keeps credit card information on me, that’s not a big deal as far as I’m concerned. I watch those credit card transactions pretty close and using a credit card is actually a very safe way to do business because you can dispute charges etc.

As you discovered, you can turn off a lot of tracking stuff if you want to. The fact that you were not aware of that is irrelevant, that’s your own due-diligence to keep up with. I knew about most of that stuff within a few days of when they began it but I can see where it might be a shock to someone who wasn’t aware of it.

That kind of thing doesn’t worry me. What worries me is the things we don’t know they’re tracking. If they give us control over it, if they let us check a box or click a button to stop it, then it’s really not all that important to Google. The important things are going on in the back room where you don’t see them and they don’t give you a button for that stuff.

For instance, this site uses fonts.googleapis.com customs style sheets (CSS). What might be embedded in a custom style sheet? Private data can be stolen with a CSS injection. Do you know if Google isn’t doing that? Do I? Nope, I don’t and most other people probably don’t either.

Google is ubiquitous on the internet. If you use the internet, you’re using Google and very likely Google is using you.

Think that’s bad? Your ISP knows even more about you than Google does. Especially if you use the default DNS servers provided by your ISP. Every single Domain Name query gets logged by your ISP. That is every website you visit. The very nature of Domain Name Services (DNS) requires that to be so. Domain Name Services is what translates “billwhittle.com” to the corresponding IP address in the internet registry. Is anyone mining that data? I don’t know if they are and I don’t know that they’re not.

… and that’s just DNS. It doesn’t include routing tables, internet router logs and all the rest of the stuff that gets you where you want to be on the internet.

I worked as an independent consultant and contractor for small to medium size corporations for many years. I had a sticker on my tool kit (a very nice palleted leather tool kit) that said …

“I read your email.”

That wasn’t a joke. I did read people’s emails for various reasons at the behest of the company management that owned the infrastructure that those emails traversed. It was a reminder to the people working in those offices that nothing they did on company equipment was private in any way.

There’s an awful lot of power in information and we’re seeing that power being exercised more and more. You’re right to be leery of it. It’s good to educate yourself on this kind of thing. But if you’re scared of this stuff then your only real recourse is to stop using any sort of internet connection for any purpose at all.

ACTS, can you comment on VPN’s like Xpress VPN? I use it, but often wondered if any “authority” wanted to put the squeeze on a VPN provider, can they cave and simply hand over your traffic to them? You’re very sharp and I’d greatly value your informed comments.

Yes, while a VPN is a better solution to privacy sometimes, it’s still an Information Technology system with server logs and all the rest. Some VPN’s say they delete or purge those logs on a regular schedule but … Of course you have to trust that they’re actually doing that and not just saying they do it.

If they get served with an actual, real live no-shit criminal warrant, all bets are off. They can and likely will log everything you do and turn it over to the cops. Here again there is an assumption, which is that a warrant shall not be issued without cause but … You get the idea. “Probable cause” can be a bit nebulous in application, especially with some judges.

On top of all of that, there’s no real way to be certain as a consumer that the VPN provider is not harvesting and selling your data themselves. While to an outside interest the data may not be personally linked to you, it is easily linked to “the user on IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (or the IPv6 equivalent) at xyz time for zyx duration”. VPN services most often use a dynamic IP system with a long duration lease so you end up with the same IP address most of the time. Especially if you use the VPN often, like daily.

I use a VPN system myself, for some things, when I don’t want the consequences of using my real IP to be an issue. Like posting to certain places on the internet that I don’t want coming back on me easily. Trolling leftists for example, I don’t and never have trusted those unhinged bastards not to track someone like me down to “teach me a lesson” and then have to do something drastic in self defense. They tend to get really, really angry with me. Often. Which is a big part of the fun. I know I shouldn’t do that, I know it’s kind of like pulling the wings off of flies or kicking (mean, nasty) little puppies. It’s a fault of mine and I admit it. I try real hard to be nicer in here and not incur any friendly fire incidents that can be avoided …

So while a VPN can be useful and a good idea in some applications, it’s not bulletproof and if an “authority” puts the squeeze on them, most will roll over to get their bellies scratched. If that’s a legal authority then they really don’t have any choice but …

Having said all of that, if they just caved every time someone flashed a document or a badge then they’d be out of business. Things like torrenting and such are nearly impossible without a reasonably reliable VPN and the VPN providers know that if they bowed to DMCA takedowns (which are civil and not criminal issues) no one would use them and they would go out of business. So a lot depends on what you’re doing on your VPN.

If you’re downloading the latest digital copy of a movie via VPN there’s a 99.9% chance you’re OK, that’s a civil issue. If you’re running a child porn server there’s a 99.9% chance you’re not OK, that’s a criminal issue. Not that you would, I’m just giving examples.

Your ISP knows, or can know, that you’re using a VPN service too. They can’t intercept the contents of an encrypted tunnel but they can see the end points of the traffic and so know it’s coming from your IP and going to a VPN IP. Most don’t care a bit about that because they don’t really want to lose customers to DMCA takedown proceedures. Still, it’s good to be aware of that and you did ask so …

One last thing I’d say on this matter is that if your name really is Tim Piumarta then you should never mention exactly which VPN you use in any online discussion. I never use my real name online and I would never divulge exactly which VPN I’m using. There’s no sense in making it easy for anyone to connect the dots and connecting dots is what any investigation is all about. There are a lot of VPN services, there’s no gain in giving dots away for free.

We’re in the realm of the quasi-legal here so that’s about as much detail as I care to get into.

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