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What Google knows about you
Much has been said about Google collecting personal information
from web surfers. Some people are even so disturbed by Google's
data mining that they have completely banned
Google from their web sites.
What exactly does Google know about you if you use their
services? In this article, we try to collect a list of things
that Google knows about you.
| Google
feature |
Personal
information that Google might
collect with that feature |
| Google
Toolbar |
the
web sites you visit, how often
you visit them, how long you
visit them, the links you click,
the searches you perform, when
you perform them |
| Google
WebAccelerator |
the
web sites you visit, how often
you visit them, how long you
visit them, when you visit
them, the links you click,
the searches you perform |
| Google
AdWords |
your
complete address, your credit
card information |
| Google
AdWords conversion tracking |
your
online revenue, your number
of online sales |
| Google
Desktop Search |
the
complete content of your desktop,
your emails, your Word documents,
etc. |
| Google
AdSense |
your
complete address, the number
of your web site visitors,
if you use AdSense code on
more than one page, the way
people visit your web site |
| Personalized
Google home page |
your
interests, the stocks you own
(or are interested in), your
favorite news sources (your
political views) |
| Google
MySearch history |
all
of your searches (your interests,
hobbies, plans) |
| Google
SMS |
your
cell phone number |
| Gmail |
the
content of your email messages,
to which people you write,
which people write to you |
| Google
cookies |
they
help Google to identify you
and to combine the information
from the different Google features
to a single account |
Google can collect even more information about you with its
normal web search feature and other Google tools such as Blogger
(if you use it).
Although nobody is forced to use Google's tools, some people
find it problematic that a single company can collect that
much information. Before you use Google's services, you should
be aware that you'll share a lot of information about you
with Google.
If you want to get high rankings on Google, take a loot at
our ranking
optimization tool.
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