Curious to know what Google knows about you? Google has launched a new My Activity site which consolidates all the information that it collects about you. Since the information that Google gathers is pulled from Android, Chrome, Ads and all of Google’s web services (Google, Gmail, Maps, Play Music, YouTube and more), the information that is collected is staggering. For instance, Google knows that my phone was not active between 11PM last night and 6AM this morning. It also knows that I visited androidforums.com at 6:02, checked my email one minute later, browsed through my Instagram feed at 6:25 and then watched a YouTube video at 6:33.
Google claims that it is collecting all the information to create a full profile on you so that it can improve its services that it offers. To be clear, Google has been collecting all this information for some time. The good news is that the My Activity dashboard allows you to manage which content Google collects and associates with your Google account. You can disable Web & App Activity, Location History, Device Information, Voice & Audio Activity and YouTube watch or search history.
While many of us are OK with Google collecting the data that it does, the consequences of a data breach are unfathomable. Do you think Google would be able to survive if all the data that it collects on all its users somehow manages to show up in the public domain?