Have you ever wondered what Google knows about you — and makes available to others? Now you can develop a better idea.
The technology giant has made it easier than ever to understand what information is collected, who it is available to and enables users to change many of the corresponding settings.
“One of our goals at Google is to give users meaningful choices to protect your privacy,” Google states in its new privacy center, where links to some of the company’s most popular privacy settings are posted.
The search engine giant has been under fire for collecting personal information from insecure wireless networks, as Tech Talk has extensively reported.
Perhaps the most powerful tool is the Google Dashboard, which displays information stored for services like Alerts, Analytics, Blogger, Books, Buzz, Calendar, Checkout, Contacts, Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Latitude, Maps, Picasa, Profiles, Talk, Voice, Web History and YouTube.
It contains fascinating details like how many contacts you have, stored credit card numbers, recent status messages, most commonly e-mailed individuals, most recent piece of spam received, most recent alerts, newest e-mails, number of conversations logged, number of docs trashed, number of gadgets installed and more.
It will also indicate most recent Web search, image search, news search, product search, video search, map search, blog and book search with the corresponding date and time. It also indicates how quickly information becomes irrelevant. For example, the most e-mailed person in your Tech Talk editor’s primary Gmail account is an ex — and has not been e-mailed in some time.
Users may change their account password and privacy, sharing and subscription settings from the Google Dashboard.
The Ads Preferences Manager allows users to view and edit the information Google uses to show users interest-based advertisements within Google’s advertising network. Folks can add or remove interest categories associated with one’s Web browser or opt out of viewing relevant advertising entirely. It’s fascinating to learn what categories the Internet search giant has associated with you. As for your humble editor, the search engine’s analysis of which advertisements would be most relevant was dead-on.
Additionally, Google’s privacy center allows users to:
- Learn how to move data in and out of Google products;
- Encrypt the search traffic between one’s computer and Google;
- Learn how to partake in incognito browsing and downloading;
- Get information how to request the removal of images with inappropriate content, or to remove a photo of yourself your family, your car, or your home;
- Learn how to share videos with a specific group of individuals;
- Learn how to manage the site’s Web History;
- Learn how to chat off the record in Talk;
- Learn how to opt out of Google Analytics and Search Personalization; and
- Control Google Latitude.
It’s a powerful dashboard that Tech Talk implores you to explore. Chances are you will even learn more about yourself in the process.
it will be the perfect blog page for anyone who wants to know about this subject. You know a lot its practically difficult to argue with you (not that I really would want…HaHa). You absolutely set a whole new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Fantastic things, just excellent!
Comment by NEX-C3 — November 17th, 2011 @ 5:02 pm