Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

The issue isn't just targeted ads though. This data, once in the hands of google, is packaged and resold to whomever google pleases, for whatever purposes those parties see fit - not even to mention inevitable breaches. Not google, but see the whole healthcare data fiasco lately with apps using facebook's analytics API's as an example.

View on HN

See https://safety.google/privacy/data/

> We never sell your personal information, and give you controls over who has access

> We are committed to protecting your data from third parties. That’s why it’s our strict policy to never sell your personal information to anyone.

Out of curiosity, what are some examples of Google packaging and reselling data?

this is a serious question? Google collects anything and everything they possibly can, from every user who touches any of their software, platforms or devices. They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms. Data includes your web browsing history, location history, passive microphone recording history and email history ("anonymized" but still meta data)

> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms.

I wasn’t aware of this part specifically, so I’d like to learn more. Has this been covered in the news or something? This seems like a big deal.

I wrote a paragraph about this issue but cut it out for conciseness. I think it is worrying that if data is truly 'the new oil', it's really strange the names of the behind-the-scenes companies are not in the public debate.

> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms.

Oh? Which platforms? How did you come to learn that they were selling data to those platforms? Surely from either the platforms themselves or a respected news article?

But what actual examples are there of this? Evidence that they actually do this. Facebook has had a number of big stories and leaks showing they sell info on to other parties, but Google seems to sell advertising access rather then the data itself, which is pretty legit to it's policies.

(And while I'd agree they seem to collect data from anything they possibly can, they seem to poorly underuse that data collection as far as I can tell. I use quite a bit of google stuff and their ads profile for me is still a total mess including things I actively hate. If they struggle with not targeting me for things I've told them I hate, it's hard to feel too worried about how they're going to factor in their passive microphone recording data)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com