I am genuinely horrified to see how much data google collected from me

How do you think they are able to pay the bills of those expensive af services for free?

Fortunately you can degoogle many Android phones. And stop using big tech products in general. They have a lot of issues, not only a complete lack of privacy

They may even save every Google meet meeting for all we know. They may train their AI on how our faces look in meetings.

Nothing is too creepy for Google.

What's even scarier is that takeout is probably only the data they want you to see, or are legally obliged to share.

I would be willing to wager they have lots more on you that you're not even aware of.

don't forget if you have location enabled in your phone it tracks every single place you've been to

The worst part, is even when you try to avoid, you cant.

You send an email from proton, to mostly gmail account, now they have your email.

You mean your business, the guy next to you talk to google home, and you get recorded.

Every time I 'm forced to use a google account by some 3rd party, I get a panic attack from how predatory it is to get you to give them your data, you cant log out without 4 clic, it is a true dystopia we let that compagny rule our world

Just imagine what Microsoft and Apple are getting thru telemetry

Friends don't let friends use Google and meta. show those you care about what you have discovered. don't lecture them just make them aware, share your findings.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's the same with all the big data companies. Everything you type, say or do gets logged and never deleted.

while, yes, regardless of your privacy settings google still collects a sickening amount of data on you, much of these things (like voice recordings and location history) can be managed and disabled in the settings. if you wish to go further, grapheneos removes A LOT of tracking potential.

these should be opt in features, but one can opt out of much of them.

Today you learned a valuable lesson:

When an online service is free it generally means you're the product.

Yeah, anyone who's never done this really should. It's eye-opening to see it go from a theoretical discussion to "HOLY SHIT THEY HAVE ALL MY DATA" in real-time.

Have you been under a rock?

What's a Google takeout?

Google has a data privacy setting that lets you delete your data history at some intervals. The lowest is 3 months last I checked. Make sure to use it.

I really don't understand why you find this surprising. We're you expecting like...42% of all that to be saved?

How do you do this?

I have a few dozen google accounts, but most of them I'm locked out of. Even if I enter the correct username and password on the first try, google says I can't login because I never associated a phone number to the account.

How can I get this data?

I rarely interact in any meaningful way with anything in Google's ecosystem these days. I'm still tied by a couple little whispy threads, but nothing serious. I'm running GrapheneOS with no Google apps, switched my email to Proton, switched to Firefox, search with Brave, use a NAS for cloud storage, and browse YouTube anonymously with NewPipe. Occasionally I'll get an email on one of my old Gmail addresses, but other than that I feel like I've sufficiently deGoogled enough to feel safe.

Permanently Deleted

I gave up caring years ago when I realized it was way too late to undo it all. If Google really cares that I'm a gamer then oh well, at least my ad blockers work just fine and I use Firefox so that's good enough.

I just deleted my google account. Bye YouTube comments.

How do you know all this? Did you request your data from Google?

Omg I shoul do that too

this is such a good post. everyone who wants to learn about privacy should do a google takeout FIRST. to get hit with a huge epiphany

I've started using Kagi search. $5/mo for a great search without selling my sh1t.