Hey Google When did I ask you to read my purchase details | Hacker News Reader

Hey Google When did I ask you to read my purchase details

kanoki.org

56 pointsmin2bro27 comments

> We are living in a scary world and I DO NOT want someone to use my personal data to grow their business or run analytics without my consent.

Site has Google ads that are tailored using Google's analytics, so site owner IS profiting off of visitors' personal data.

People need to start practicing what they preach.

Then they couldn't have their cake and eat it too.

You cannot make more than few cents using Google Adsense. You are being rude here. He is sharing a credible information here. With the adsense amount I'm pretty sure he can't buy coffee also..get it right?

Then why use it at all? Would you sell out your beliefs for a cup of coffee?

> You are being rude here.

I don't think I'm being rude. I only presented a fact.

> He is sharing a credible information here.

Absolutely. But he then undermines his own credibility by trying to make money in the manner he criticizes others for doing so.

> With the adsense amount I'm pretty sure he can't buy coffee also..get it right?

Author never drew this distinction; I presume they feel profiting off of personal information is the problem, not the amount.

It's not rude to point out the author is doing something bad.

Anecdotal, but when I visit my mom, I make sure we sit down to make sure she's being safe on the internet. Last time I visited, I used that link to double check she knows what she's subscribed to. To her and my surprise, I found a second Netflix account with 4 people on it under her email (but fortunately not her credit card). Looks like someone with a similar first and last name accidentally used her email for the account. I cancelled the account, but it's concerning that Netflix never sent a confirmation email to make sure they actually owned that email.

Maybe your mom saw the email, thought it's for her for whatever reason, and hit "Confirm E-Mail"?

I get email from Amazon that is intended for a different person whose Gmail address merely includes mine as a prefix. I emailed Amazon about it but the ignored me.

> During a Census (the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population) I willingly share my personal details such as Name, Age, Gender, Employment Status, Salary details to the agency so that they can take a better decision in providing the government schemes and services like how many new roads to be built, Town Planning, Employment Generation etc.

If you don't willingly the government can compel you to by force. The census is not a good example of voluntary information giving which is why its questions are a contentious political issue.

Ok, that's is strange! Thank you for this! On the list you can check the little (!) icon and find out, how google got the information. In my case two order items was extracted directly from gmail.

The bigger question is why Google is reading and extracting this data from my email id? I don't feel safe and secure. God knows what else they are reading from my mailbox.

Unfortunately that's pretty much the deal with a free gmail account. If you don't want them to do it, pay for a business account (maybe?) or pay for an account somewhere else.

Mining your email for keywords and selling you things has been part of their business for a long time. Knowing what you've actually bought is just part of that.

When I purchase a product, Google can track that package if it detects tracking info.

When I book a flight, Google notifies me when the flight is leaving, providing suggestions about when to leave my house in order to make it.

All of these things can be done from reading your email. For someone invested in the Google ecosystem, this is a nice and seamless integration that helps me in my life. That is why they are extracing data from your mail.

It has been so blindingly obvious that they do this for so long that I'm honestly shocked that anyone is even surprised, let alone offended.

I've appreciated at times that they do this for things like delivery tracking numbers. I just stick "my orders" in google and it gives me a listing including any updated delivery statuses.

(disclaimer: My opinions are solely my own and not that of my employer.)

If you are a merchant, there are standards for sending package/order information in a machine-readable way in email:

https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/overview

The purpose is to provide personalized useful features like package tracking. When logged in, you can search for something like "my packages" or "where are my packages". This is a feature that users expect from other assistants (e.g. Amazon Alexa) and email clients (e.g. Outlook).

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1710607

The categories that are being extracted for personalized search should be fairly limited (primarily hotels, flights, online purchases).

If you don't feel safe or secure using Google products, you should strongly consider switching away. I personally would suggest Outlook.com, but you could also self-host or use an indie hosting provider like FastMail.

(Most product folks make trade-offs for the average person. There are some great security tech coming out of Google (Security Keys, Chromebooks/Chrome OS) but a lot of the security assumes at least moderate trust in Google.)

They’re reading everything. It says so in the TOS.

I'm fairly certain everyone with a gmail account, agreed to this behavior, I think its unnerving to see it categorized like this, they haven't been underhanded about this (not to say companies haven't been underhanded), or hiding it in anyway.

Too many people seem to skip reading what they are agreeing to, and then get upset when the company does what they agreed to allow them to.

I've closed my google account (and moved to proton) because I noticed this "feature". Of course, the positions are disappearing once mail gets deleted but google didn't ask me if I want this or had my permission to fetch data and prepare such list, not mention I don't find it in any way useful.

I saw that today and though the same thing, looks like they are getting it from email but I do wish I could limit what I let google link to these kinda things.

Stop using Gmail and they won't have the data.

Valve and gog.com usually don't release sales data, but Google surely knows.

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