Discovering Just How Much Google Knows About You

When you start to investigate Google (or Facebook and other services), you suddenly realize that the company knows an awful lot about you. And that Google is using this information primarily to build an accurate profile of who you are and what you like. This way it can effectively target its advertising; that is, it sends you ads for products and services that you’re interested in.

Obviously, some people are more relaxed about this than others. At the Google Zeitgeist forum in 2010, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told the audience that “Society as a group has not decided what is appropriate and what is not appropriate in the privacy sphere, and each society and group will differ.” I’d take ...

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