We know everything about you

Before we start the series of articles about online promotion, let’s see what the web knows about us. For an illustration, we will take two most widely used Internet sites in the world — Google and Facebook.

Let’s start from the search giant Google. Here is the list of data it collects:

• complete history of your voice commands in any products from Google (including audio recordings);
• complete list of everything you did with any Android device;
• number of Android devices related to one account;
• number of installed apps;
• number of images you stored in Google Photo;

· complete list of all your actions in Google Play Store;

• accurate number of search queries in Google per month;
• complete history of your relocations;
• number of emails you sent via Gmail;
• use of Google Chrome (quite a separate subject about data collection here);
• your best friends (according to Google’s data);
• statistical data from Google calendar;
• number of videos you have watched on YouTube this month.

This is not all data gathered about us. You can find the full list of things we kindly provide to the search giant here and here you can download all data about you.

Now, Facebook. After the conversation between the Congress of the USA and Zuckerberg, a paper was published unveiling the kind of user data collected by the social network.

So how Facebook is following you? When you register, you specify the following information:

· name and surname;

· date of birth;

· gender;

· password;

· phone number and email;

· information about education;

In fact, Facebook knows more than you think:

· language;

· location;

· nationality;

· data about income and property;

· family status;

· what business you own;

· place of work, position, names of colleagues;

· future important life events;

· data about property and real estate, including its cost;

· everything about credit cards and banking services;

· which gadgets you own and which apps are your favorite;

· who deals with investing;

· which email service you use;

· which browser you use;

· interests and hobbies;

· who spends money on charity;

· political views and activity;

· favorite TV and radio channels;

· how long ago you uploaded photos;

· what games you play;

· what products you buy;

· where you travel and for how long;

· what pet you have and what you buy for it.

Using Facebook, we obtain an opportunity to:

· find out the news;

· boost our self-esteem;

· make money online;

· participate in a great variety of events;

· communicate.

Besides, the following data is gathered:

· battery level of your device;

· plugins installed in your browser;

· your mouse motions;

· content of other users and frequency of your communication with them;

· use of the camera embedded in Facebook app;

· meta data of photos (including time and place of shooting);

· apps installed on your device;

· names and types of files on your device;

· available space on your disk;

· identifiers from games, apps, and other accounts;

· in case of Android devices — call and SMS history;

· time, frequency, and duration of actions on the social network tab page (including the information of whether the page is active or running in the background);

· the nearest to the user Wi-Fi and mobile hotspots;

· mobile and stationary providers via computers, phones, connected TV sets, and other devices on the web;

· settings and resolutions of your device.

You must admit that the list of gathered data is huge. It can help to define not only which products may interest us in the future but also how our opinion will change regarding different sorts of events (political preferences, views on different conflicts, etc.).

You can find the guide of how to download your information here in case you get interested what is known about you.

“He who owns the information, owns the world” — Nathan Rothschild

In fact, since the moment people understood the value of information, they have been trying to gather as much of it as possible. Browser fingerprints are collected from all users.

Data on the Internet use can reveal many things about users and their preferences, so corporations should collect all possible details including the slope angle of a smartphone and typing speed. The latter allows finding out your mood at this specific moment.

All gathered information is segmented into clusters: interests, workplace, position, place of residence, and hundreds of other metrics that are later transferred to advertising agencies, hardware manufacturers, apps developers, and analysts. Nobody can give an explicit answer to the question whether collecting and transferring data to the government and third parties is ethical, as technologies can save lives, prevent accidents and possible breaches of law.

Such regulations as GDPR are intended to protect Internet rights of the EU citizens, but they are applicable not to everyone.

You can use the right to be forgotten if it is available to you of course, but everything that has gotten on the Internet will remain there (:

Daniil Variga

Digital Marketer