Google tracks your activity
They’ve been tracking you since you first created that free Drive, Gmail or YouTube account. You can review the data Google tracks and download it. Google also lets you delete some data.
Google tracks via Gmail
Take a deep breath and visit https://myaccount.google.com/dashboard. Login if prompted.
Google tracks all you do, and has been, for a long time.
Let’s start with the Gmail link. Google indexes Gmail contents and uses that to help determine which ads will be most interesting to us. Let’s see just how much data Google tracks.
- Click the Gmail button.
- Click GO TO GMAIL.
- Click All Mail (on the left).
- Peruse your entire mailbox.
Google reports 4,789 messages in my Gmail account. Although Google reports 4,789 messages, I see only 224 messages in my Inbox, 10 in Trash and 487 in Sent. The rest fall into the categories of Social, Updates and Promotions. I found these categories while proofreading this math. Gmail tracks our messages and uses the contents to help build profiles. Google then uses this profile data to present targeted ads.
You can search within these results. Just go to the “Search mail” box near the top, type a search term and hit (Enter). Here’s what I found:
- Expedia produced 27 results. Not sure why this happened. I do not use my Gmail account to access Expedia.
- Holly (my wife) produced 76 results.
- Nextdoor produced infinite results. Gmail stops trying to count.
| Page | Result |
| https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Nextdoor | 1-50 of about 94 |
| https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Nextdoor/p2 | 51-100 of about 99 |
| https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Nextdoor/p3 | 101-150 of many |
Google records web and app activity
Click Web & App Activity. Google says, “Web & App Activity stores your searches and other things you do on Search, Maps and other Google services, including your location and other associated data.” Click Web & App Activity then click the resulting GO TO WEB & APP ACTIVITY.
The results start with the KB4-con conference, and seemingly have no end. This was my most recent Google search. You can drag the scroll thumb all the way to the bottom and then your web browser pushes it up as the web page expands. It’s a dangling carrot. I must confess I did not reach the end. I’m writing a book here.
Google tracks a lot
In my next article, I will show how to purge your activity from Google’s records.
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How Hacks Happen and how to protect yourself. Visit https://howhackshappen.com and view three chapters online for FREE today or visit https://www.amazon.com/How-Hacks-Happen-protect-yourself/dp/0983576920/. By Mark Anthony Germanos, of https://cybersafetynet.net/about-cyber-safety-net/.