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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

Google, whose core business model fundamentally depends on extensive data-mining of user information?

Does it? Try Googling from an incognito window on your neighbour's wifi. Use a live distro if you want to be completely sure. Are the results significantly different? Are ads any worse?

I have tried a couple of tests like that (on other people's devices, etc) and the only noticeable use of that trove of data Google has about me is suggested searches from my search history. Google Now can also pull an article of interest every once in a while the same way.

That doesn't mean they don't have the data and won't cough it up on government's request but there seems to be very little effective mining going on.

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Have a look: https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads

If you don't trust that, then a great way to find out what any advertising company knows about you is to act like an advertiser and look at what user data you can get. I don't mean call up google advertising and pretending that you're head of marketing at $BIGCOMPANY (you could, but it's not what I meant), but try looking at the product pages made for advertisers.

Your comments seem to underscore how Google controls the debate by defining the terms on privacy issues. You seem to be saying "Concerned about privacy? You could check up on Google by acting like one of its advertising customers.." which sort of highlights the parties Google is most interested in being transparent with (for completely understandable business reasons).

But of course in order to do that, you also have to have a login, cookie, etc. for a panel that Google controls, and that exposes only a tiny subset of the information it could most obviously and trivially correlate about user activities.

These just aren't really things people trying to visit wordpress sites should have to consider..

Please see my other comments on this thread about privacy terminology, norms, etc. But yes, I think that when considering the debate, one should look at both sides for an honest understanding of what's going on.

Tinfoil-hatting a login for intel gathering's a stretch. Please use whatever you feel necessary (e.g., TAILS) for keeping your privacy while doing a little recon on what google's offering about its users to advertisers.

Ultimately, wordpress chose to refer to google for font loading. That's their choice and right, and it's what people reading wordpress will have to deal with.

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