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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @12:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the never-give-up-the-data dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Way back in December 2018, we reported that Google was building a creepy profile of everything people purchase by scanning their emails in Gmail. In that report, we covered ways to delete this purchase history which included deleting the order data directly from your Gmail inbox. Now a new report is claiming that deleting emails doesn't work and there's actually no way to delete this Google purchase history.

The report from CNBC's Todd Haselton says that he deleted 10 years worth of emails from his Gmail inbox in order to clear his Google purchase history. However, three weeks after deleting all the email, his purchase history is still there. He adds that he can't delete anything from this list of purchases and he can't stop Google adding his recent purchases to this list.

Google says that unlinking your subscriptions and changing the activity settings for other Google services can reduce the purchase history data that's collected. However, it doesn't provide any specific examples of which subscription settings or activity settings to change in order to stop this purchase data being collected.

Additionally, since Google's recommendation of deleting purchase receipts from your Gmail inbox doesn't appear to work, these other recommendations may also do little to prevent purchase data from being collected.

Source: https://reclaimthenet.org/google-gmail-purchase-history-cannot-be-deleted/


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:03PM

    I always use pennies.

    No serial numbers on pennies.

    And if anyone wants to steal them, $100 worth weighs 25kg (~55lbs).

    The best part is when you drive up in your 15 foot panel truck to buy a new car or a nice oak bedroom set.

    I just bring down the pallet with the pennies in a huge burlap sack and tell the sales guy, "Just let me know if it's not enough and then go have a nice meal at a nearby restaurant, but not too expensive a meal, and not too far away, as I'll be carrying ~50lbs of pennies with me to pay.

    Life is good!

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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