Here's the Truth About What Google and Facebook Know About You
As the nation’s top tech firms face increased scrutiny regarding their management of personal data, a burgeoning movement of startup analysts are attempting to determine just how much companies like Facebook and Google actually know about their users.
One such investigator is Dylan Curran, who recently leveraged his Twitter account to display his research into the type of information he — and others like him — give up on a daily basis in exchange for the services provided by these influential corporations.
Identified as a technical consultant and web developer, Curran has booked numerous media appearances and launched an effort to turn his passion into a full-time job in the days since his series of tweets reached a wide audience online.
Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
He began by teasing his followers that performing a search on Facebook and Google for their own scraped personal data is a good way to “freak yourself out.”
The tweets that followed pointed to a number of ways these and other companies use popular products to track users, including their travel habits.
1. https://t.co/1z255Zt1zf Google stores your location (if you have it turned on) every time you turn on your phone, and you can see a timeline from the first day you started using Google on your phone
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Google also keeps a record of users’ search histories in a database that can survive being deleted on a specific device, he wrote.
3. https://t.co/qFCgY6QLN5 Google stores search history across all your devices on a separate database, so even if you delete your search history and phone history, Google STILL stores everything until you go in and delete everything, and you have to do this on all devices
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
While it has been widely known for years that tech firms provide advertisements based on data collected through these methods, Curran claimed the process is deeper than many users realize.
6. https://t.co/5B6qxUvrJz Google stores ALL of your YouTube history, so they know whether you're going to be a parent soon, if you're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic…
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
The sheer size of documents revealing this stored information is staggering, according to Curran’s social media report.
He wrote that Google has the equivalent of 3 million Microsoft Word documents worth of information based on his online activities.
7. Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you, I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB BIG, which is roughly 3 MILLION Word documents https://t.co/3Na4FxjNXk
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Facebook has considerably less, Curran found, but still maintains a file on him roughly the size of 400,000 Word documents.
10. Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information, mine was roughly 600mb, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
Curran similarly included screenshots of his search for the type of information collected and stored by Facebook.
That data includes “every message you’ve ever sent or been sent, every file you’ve ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you’ve ever sent or been sent,” he wrote.
Facebook also reportedly records the “files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what RADIO stations you listen to.”
Cullen cited what he found to be a troubling irony about the modern age of tech giants like Facebook and Google. He wrote that we trade away privacy we would never cede to the government because we “want to watch cute dog videos.”
In addition to his tweets and subsequent media appearances, Cullen also wrote an opinion article on the topic published this week by The U.K. Guardian.
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