Good evening and welcome back to another post from ToBeSecured. Time management has truly been my best friend lately as I've been trying to make deadlines for projects, homework, and being consistent with my blog. As many of you may know, I started my visual content on yesterday where I recorded my first video as an introduction about myself and the plans I have with this new aspect of my business. I will refer to my video posts as Cyber Tuesday's and will not cover specific content, only general information as it relates to privacy and security in the tech world. But that is the exciting news I have been hiding from you all and I would like to thank my mother and significant other for motivating me to go the extra mile in bringing awareness of these issues.
The message I will be relaying today is how Google has created a profile of us all, the ways they exploit us and our information, and methods they use for advertising purposes as it goes against morals and rights to privacy. This post may be a little lengthy so be prepared to read for about 8 - 10 minutes.
According to Patrick Berlinquette from Medium.com, our willingness to exchange privacy for convenience didn’t start with the advent of virtual assistants. It started in the early 2000s, when people—in return for having access to Google products and seeing more relevant ads—allowed Google to have all their data. There have never been more opportunities for marketers to exploit your data. Today, 40,000 Google search queries are conducted every second. That’s 3.5 billion searches per day, 1.2 trillion searches per year.
For as long as we have been using Google, they've been building a profile about us. Every internet search contains keywords, and the keywords you just entered into Google are fought over by advertisers. Each advertiser who offers a product related to your keywords wants its ad to be seen and clicked. Generally, your first four search results—what you see before having to scroll down—are all paid advertisements. More than 50 percent of people between the ages of 18–34 can’t differentiate between an ad and an organic result on Google. Once you click on an ad, your information passes through to search engine marketers, where it’s forever stored in an AdWords account, never to be erased.
Here is a complete checklist of everything Google knows about you—thereby all the ways you’re tracked—as of December 2018:
Your age
Your income
Your gender
Your parental status
Your relationship status
Your browsing history (long-term and short-term)
Your device (phone, tablet, desktop, TV)
Your physical location
The age of your child (toddler, infant, etc.)
How well you did in high school
The degree you hold
The time (of day) of your Google usage
The exact words you enter into Google search
The context and topics of the websites you visit
The products you buy
The products you have almost bought
Your Wi-Fi type
etc.
In 2019, we will be coming close to realizing the reality and severity of search engine marketing: multi-device attribution. When this tech is realized, ads will follow searchers seamlessly—not only across channels (e.g., social, organic, and email) but across devices (e.g., from mobile to tablet to laptop to TV to desktop). Your TV will emit a hyper-frequency during certain commercials. Undetectable by your obsolete human ear, this signal can only be picked up by a nearby cell phone. If a Nike commercial plays on your TV, and then you pick up your phone and Google “Nike shoes,” your conversion path has been linked from TV to phone. Marketers already know if you’re a daily commuter. And they show you ads for products that daily commuters would be interested in buying, like headphones, pre-worn leather laptop bags, and food to munch on. How do marketers know you’re a commuter? Easy: The frequency your cell phone pings passing cell towers.
Search for a product on your phone and then physically walk into a store. Do that, in that order, and chances are Google used your phone’s GPS data to connect your ad click and your in-store purchase.
In order to provide marketers with further detail about your in-store (offline) purchases, Google has acquired (paid millions for) Mastercard credit card data. The company has acknowledged it has access to about 70 percent of U.S. credit and debit card sales through “third-party partnerships.” We will look back on this number and consider it quaint.
Back in December 2008, Hal Roberts, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, spoke about Google Ads as a form of “gray surveillance.” Roberts described Google as “a system of collective intelligence” that, along with marketers, hoarded and exploited your data. Despite the surveillance bleeding into nearly every aspect of our lives, there’s little information available to the public about what’s really going on.
Today, people tell Google things they confess nowhere else—not to their spouses, doctors, or shrinks. But Google users would not be so transparent with the search engine if they understood how far down this rabbit hole goes. With the insider information I will provide, I hope readers can return to a place where Google is not the only option available to tell their fears, regrets, hopes, and dreams.
By the end of this series, readers will be equipped with the knowledge to rethink their relationship with Google. And if some readers decide that Google is still their search engine of choice, they’ll be able to use the system, instead of the other way around. - Words right from Patrick himself.
If you would like to discuss further, please leave a comment or ask a question. I'd love to chat with my readers and hear your thoughts. Thank you for dropping in and remember ToBeSecured!
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