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Google Reverses Privacy Policy; Now Allows Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday October 22 2016, @02:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-no-one-was-surprised dept.

number6 writes:

Google has decided that your privacy is no longer their "number one priority" and reversed their long-standing policy towards anonymous online ad tracking and user names; the Google DoubleClick advertising database will now be combined with all other information Google has on users, such as from Gmail and all other accounts and logins.

excerpt of the new policy:

We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services -- for example to make it easier to share things with people you know. [...] Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google's services and the ads delivered by Google. [...]

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article source:
https://www.propublica.org/article/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2016, @10:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2016, @10:24PM (#417686)

    > You don't have to sign into to Google to use an Android phone

    I can believe there are people here who believe that. But with all the conspiracy theory loving "cynics" I can't believe you got modded up to +5 for that naive bullshit.

    Yeah you don't have to "log in" but that doesn't stop google from tracking the ever-living shit out of you anyway. If you have google play services (and tons of apps, even side-loaded apps, require play services) then you might as well have logged in. Play services is a giant binary blob that phones home to the mothership on a frequent basis. It reports your location, not just GPS coordinates but the SSID's and MAC addresses of nearby wifi hotspots. Its open season on your contact list, calling history and browser history.

    If you have an android phone and you haven't deliberately replaced the OS with a stripped down de-googled version like AOSP then your privacy is just marginally better than someone who uses all the services that google uses as bait. If you think otherwise, then you are a sucker.

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