Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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I am genuinely horrified to see how much data google collected from me (lemmy.zip)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

138 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I created a google takeout and in that zip file I found some files containing a ton of data about me. It has logged every single page I visited while using the google search engine and chrome browser. It even logged every single time I opened an app on my old android phone. It even has VOICE RECORDINGS of me and a log of every time I used google assistant. This is just some of the data and I'm very sure there is even more data they have.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

takeout.google.com

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That tells me to login

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Have the same issue on one of my accounts. I can login but when I try to do anything, I need to verify by getting a code over SMS. The thing is, the phone number on that account is an old one I don't have access to anymore. There is no other verification option, I can't delete it from my account without verification and I'm definitely not adding my actual number.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably a GDPR data request

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Hmm, wouldn't that make it worse? Because then you have to give your real name, no?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

No, most sites have a button stashed in some submenu of the account page that allows you to request your data. It’s either a legal requirement of the GDPR or they just don’t want to deals with individual email requests, I’m not exactly sure.

It usually does take a lot of time for the request to be “processed”, you usually get an email with a zip archive after about a week. I’m not sure if that’s malicious compliance.

You can also send a GDPR request to have them delete all your data, but they do have 1 month to comply and in my experience most services do take that long to “process” your request.

Keep in mind that many services hide these options for non-EU citizens.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

As if Google doesn't already know.