If you use the internet in any capacity you probably already know the extent of Google’s knowledge about who you are as well as your day to day activities. However, did you know that there is a dedicated page on in your Google Account settings (or it can be accessed directly by visiting: https://adssettings.google.com) that can actually reveal a detailed list based on the information Google has on you regarding what kind of person you are?
We’re talking about things like whether or not you’re married, what your potential occupation could be, what your personality is like and a lot of other things. Some of the predictions that have been made by clicking on this link are actually so accurate that they end up becoming downright eerie which is a big part of the reason why a lot of people are concerned at how much information Google has on you.
Things like your income bracket are also possible for Google to ascertain, and this is basically based on things like your search history, the kind of videos you watch on YouTube as well as a wide variety of other things. This can tell us a lot about how easy it can be to piece together some kind of a personality profile based on someone’s search history, and it makes it even more evident that we need to start taking things like data protection a lot more seriously because of the fact that this information is clearly of a very personal nature, so much so that if it ends up in the wrong hands then it might even compromise the safety of the various users of internet services.
The main purpose of Google making profiles like this basically has to do with customized advertisements. Google’s search engine earns a majority of its income from ad sales, and the more accurate the ads are based on who you are as a person, the more likely you will be to click on them thereby making the whole enterprise a great deal more profitable for Google than it would have been otherwise.
There are a couple of things to take into consideration here if you are the kind of person that is worrying about this sort of thing all in all. One thing that you should bear in mind is that a lot of the predictions that Google has made for people that they find in Ad Personalization setting are actually quite far off from who they really are, so it’s not like Google is some kind of monolithic entity that has all of the knowledge that anyone could ever want on the people around them.
Another thing that you should bear in mind is that if you don’t want Google to track your information allowing it to make accurate guesses about who you are as a person then there is a button you can click that would toggle Google’s storing and analyzing of your search history off. This will give you some control over the kind of impact Google can have on your life although the existence of an entity that can ascertain so much about you because of the information that it has is certainly something that would give some people pause.
Read next: With Google Search, User Can Now See Pronunciation of Complex Words
We’re talking about things like whether or not you’re married, what your potential occupation could be, what your personality is like and a lot of other things. Some of the predictions that have been made by clicking on this link are actually so accurate that they end up becoming downright eerie which is a big part of the reason why a lot of people are concerned at how much information Google has on you.
Things like your income bracket are also possible for Google to ascertain, and this is basically based on things like your search history, the kind of videos you watch on YouTube as well as a wide variety of other things. This can tell us a lot about how easy it can be to piece together some kind of a personality profile based on someone’s search history, and it makes it even more evident that we need to start taking things like data protection a lot more seriously because of the fact that this information is clearly of a very personal nature, so much so that if it ends up in the wrong hands then it might even compromise the safety of the various users of internet services.
The main purpose of Google making profiles like this basically has to do with customized advertisements. Google’s search engine earns a majority of its income from ad sales, and the more accurate the ads are based on who you are as a person, the more likely you will be to click on them thereby making the whole enterprise a great deal more profitable for Google than it would have been otherwise.
There are a couple of things to take into consideration here if you are the kind of person that is worrying about this sort of thing all in all. One thing that you should bear in mind is that a lot of the predictions that Google has made for people that they find in Ad Personalization setting are actually quite far off from who they really are, so it’s not like Google is some kind of monolithic entity that has all of the knowledge that anyone could ever want on the people around them.
Another thing that you should bear in mind is that if you don’t want Google to track your information allowing it to make accurate guesses about who you are as a person then there is a button you can click that would toggle Google’s storing and analyzing of your search history off. This will give you some control over the kind of impact Google can have on your life although the existence of an entity that can ascertain so much about you because of the information that it has is certainly something that would give some people pause.
Read next: With Google Search, User Can Now See Pronunciation of Complex Words
