Check your settings if you don't want Google tracking every move - USA TODAY
Check your settings if you don't want Google tracking every move - USA TODAY |
- Check your settings if you don't want Google tracking every move - USA TODAY
- Insider exposes Google’s efforts to influence 2020 election against Trump - RT
- Study finds 89% of US citizens turn to Google before their doctor - WVLT.TV
| Check your settings if you don't want Google tracking every move - USA TODAY Posted: 24 Jun 2019 01:59 AM PDT CLOSE  If you want to use certain Google features, you'll get a notification urging you to turn the feature on. USA TODAY MORRO BAY, Calif. – I stepped out of the car and took a visit to a local hotel here right off the main road. It was so easy to find, I didn't have to use Google Maps to get there. So imagine my surprise when I later looked up the hotel on Google and saw this message: "You visited here two days ago." That was Google's Location History talking, the search giant's controversial people-tracking feature that's billed as a tool to help Google make better suggestions on places to eat and visit. For me, Google had indeed made a detailed record of everywhere I went – from strolling along the waterfront, where I bought gas, and even when I pulled off the road on the way home and got out of the car to take a photo of a railroad bridge in Gaviota, California. Google says "Location History" is an opt-in feature that I don't remember opting in for. I put the question to folks on social media and received similar responses. They couldn't remember either. "I knew I was being tracked but naively didn't think they were saving everything in a timeline," says Google user Leslie Morgan Nakajima, of Capitola, California. "But to see everything there was pretty chilling. They had every store, restaurant and bar I had visited, and the exact times I was there. I was so freaked out." There's a good explanation why folks like Nakajima and others can't recall opting in. Yes, Location History is truly turned off when you sign up for a Google account. But if you want to use certain Google features, you will get a notification stopping you – until you turn the feature on. For instance, Google Maps has a service called "Match," which suggests restaurants based on your past dining experiences and tastes. If you click on it, Google sends you to Settings to allow Location History tracking. Google also routes people to turn on Location History in exchange for "real-time traffic updates based on your current location" or with Google Photos to "help improve auto-organization and search." And the company is totally upfront about what it does, with fine print that most consumers probably don't read. Location History "saves where you go even when you aren't using a specific Google service," says the company. (We put in the itals for emphasis.) Click here to see what data is on your Timeline, at https://www.google.com/maps/timeline And while Google declined to address the popularity of this feature, it has made two significant changes to try to calm users' fears of data mining. Currently, if you're uncomfortable with Google having all this information, you can go in and delete it. But later this summer, Google will introduce a new "auto-delete" tool that will get rid of your data, either every three or 18 months. Also over the summer, "Incognito Mode" comes to Maps. Users can click on the feature, popular in the Google Chrome browser, to search, says Google, without being tracked. Users could use Maps all the time without being tracked by simply changing the settings, at https://www.myaccount.google.com. This is where Google offers different degrees of privacy controls that can be turned off. Web and app activity: Google monitors your searches. It says doing so gets you faster results and better searches. Pro: We love when Google finds us local restaurants and gas stations. Con: It is the deal with the devil – leave this off and Google now is a spy in your pocket. So think about that before you turn it off. Activity controls: This is where Google collects the data on your contacts and calendars in order to, say, create a personalized trip for your next vacation from getting the confirmations from your calendar. Pro: Better vacation info is good. Con: You're using Google for search. Does it really need to know your mother's address and phone number? Voice and audio activity: This gives Google the right to record your voice asking queries of the Google Home speaker. Turn it off and "voice inputs won't be saved to your Google Account, even if you're signed in," says Google. Or, in other words, as Nakajima found out, her Google Home is now inoperable, because she turned this feature off. "I may just give it to a friend," she says. "It's useless to me now." Pro: Talking to home speakers is always fun and useful, for checking spellings, doing math and finding arcane trivia answers. Con: It's always ready to listen. Beyond turning off Location Services, the two other selections are for Google-owned YouTube. Turn off YouTube search and watch history, and the network says it won't be able to make on-the-money recommendations based on your video tastes. And for all the angst over Location History, some people do like it. "I look at it this (paranoid) way: I don't plan on committing any crimes," says Mark Loundy, a San Francisco based photographer. "Should I ever be wrongly accused of one, my location history would likely be exculpatory." Denver-based web designer Bill Beebe poses a fascinating question. "Do you think it's better that Google reminds the population subtly how much they know or just leave it off?" Most people, he adds, would be amazed at how much Google knows, "but I wonder how much they care until something bad happens with that data." Aleksandra Korolova, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, says companies just need to be more upfront about their tracking. "Tracking without meaningful controls for individuals is not good for society and individual freedoms," she says. "Going forward, if information is going to be tracked, then individuals should be given more meaningful controls to opt-out." Google declined to comment. Readers — How comfortable are you with the data Google tracks? Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham (@jeffersongraham) on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/06/24/change-settings-google-could-follow-you-even-no-app-opened/1434180001/  |
| Insider exposes Google’s efforts to influence 2020 election against Trump - RT Posted: 24 Jun 2019 02:09 PM PDT  Google interferes with search results, censors conservative views and even directly manipulates facts in the name of 'fairness', according to internal video and documents a whistleblower has turned over to Project Veritas. The internet giant has a near-monopoly on web searches globally and owns the most popular video sharing site, YouTube. The alarming information provided to the conservative transparency activists shows the company's executives putting their thumb on the scale in an effort to "prevent the next Trump situation," as one of them put it. Monday's expose includes an undercover video of Jen Genai, Google's head of 'Responsible Innovation', outlining the measures already being taken to fight the US president in the upcoming 2020 election. The video was later blocked on YouTube.
The company is currently at work "training our algorithms" in a way that might have prevented Trump's electoral victory in 2016, she added, without specifying what the effect might be in 2020. One of the documents provided to Veritas by a Google insider shows the way the company manipulates information in favor of liberal perspectives. The document details what it calls "algorithmic unfairness," meaning that when something factually true is considered unfair (sexist, racist, etc.), it "may be desirable to consider how we might help society reach a more fair and equitable state via product intervention." As evidence of this algorithm in action, Veritas was provided a screenshot of suggestions that appear when one searches for "Hillary Clinton emails" or the different search suggestions for "women can" and "men can." Among the creators suppressed by YouTube's algorithms are creators who self-identify as liberals, but frequently criticize Democrat talking points. "What YouTube did is they changed the results of the recommendation engine," the insider told Veritas. "So content that is similar to Dave Rubin or Tim Pool, instead of listing Dave Rubin or Tim Pool as people that you might like, what they're doing is that they're trying to suggest different news outlets, for example, like CNN, or MSNBC, or these left leaning political outlets." Project Veritas has already felt YouTube's wrath themselves, having the video revealing internal censorship at another internet company, Pinterest, censored and deleted. There were also reports on Monday that Veritas has been banned from Reddit, a popular discussion platform, after publishing the Google revelations. Also on rt.com YouTube removes Project Veritas video on Pinterest's 'censorship of conservative views'Earlier this month, YouTube went on a spree of banning and de-monetizing creators, after a journalist at a left-leaning outlet Vox demanded the removal of a conservative comedian for making fun of him. The fallout came to be dubbed the "VoxAdpocalypse." Since the 2016 election, social media companies have found themselves in a crossfire, with Democrats blaming them for Trump's ability to bypass mainstream media gatekeepers and demanding censorship of 'hate speech' – which, according to repeated revelations by whistleblowers, insiders and other Silicon Valley dissidents, in practice translates into banning speech that Democrats hate. Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!  |
| Study finds 89% of US citizens turn to Google before their doctor - WVLT.TV Posted: 25 Jun 2019 01:49 PM PDT  WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) -- A recent study by eligibility.com found 89 percent of patients nationwide Google their health symptoms before going to their doctor. Kim Martin, a physician's assistant at Masonboro Family Medicine, finds that number to be believable. "I spend most of my time explaining what they don't have, versus telling them what they do have," Martin said. "A lot of times I have to do a lot of reasoning of why you don't have this and that. I have to give that explanation versus actually explaining what they do have." According to the study, respondents said they wanted to find out the severity of their health condition before going to a doctor. While Martin appreciates her patients taking interest in their own health, she says Googling symptoms often leads to anxiety. "They come in and are like, 'Oh, I don't have cancer? Thank gosh,'" Martin said. "It's like, 'No, it's not (cancer). It's an ingrown hair,' or whatever. But absolutely, they get themselves very anxious about it." Martin said under certain circumstances, Googling symptoms before seeing a doctor can be beneficial. "The Mayo Clinic website, WebMD, all of those are good," Martin said. "A lot of it may be outside of their understanding a little bit but I definitely feel like they need to see that common link between those websites and then they might have the right information." Martin recommends checking with multiple sites to verify information and seeing something on just one site may not be enough. She does encourage her patients to research conditions and diagnoses following a doctor's visit. "If I've diagnosed somebody with something new, light high blood pressure, in those cases I love for them to go and research it and say, 'OK, I know how my medicine works and what kind of diet I should be on and what type of activities I should be participating in,' and that's when I find it super beneficial," Martin said. "Then they can take a proactive approach." The study found in North Carolina, the top searched symptom was loss of sleep. "We have a huge number of people who have issues with sleep so that's really common," Martin said. "I would say another one is fatigue. I'm sure people Google fatigue a lot, and weight, weight gain, those are the three I would guess people look up the most." Overall, Martin said it is always best to visit a healthcare professional instead of trying to self diagnose. "Go make an appointment and check it out, but I do recommend going in informed," Martin said. "But realize that there's a good likelihood that you have misdiagnosed yourself. So just be patient and if the diagnosis isn't correct and we go on to do different testing, and it turns out to be something else, but I feel like people chase down that wrong avenue so much of the time." Copyright 2019 WECT. All rights reserved.  |
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