The age of Big Brother

When you want to find something out, you turn to Google, it is the biggest and most efficient search engine out there and not only that but Google offers very useful software and apps that make out digital life a lot easier. This blog is hosted by Google and I use their Chrome browser almost exclusively.

However, we should be aware that Google has changed its Privacy Policy in ways that may affect us. These changes will come into effect on Thursday. I won’t bore you with all the details, you can read those for yourselves. The important bit is about what information Google will be collecting about you.  

Information that Google collects

We collect information to provide better services to all of our users – from basics, such as which language you speak to more complex things, such as which ads you’ll find most useful or the people who matter most to you online.

We collect information in two ways:

• Information that you give us. For example, many of our services require you to sign up for a Google Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information, such as your name, email address, telephone number or credit card number. If you want to take full advantage of the sharing features that we offer, we might also ask you to create a publicly visible Google Profile, which may include your name and photo.

• Information that we get from your use of our services. We may collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, such as when you visit a website that uses our advertising services or you view and interact with our ads and content. This information includes:

  • Device information

    We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers and mobile network information, including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.

  • Log information

    When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This may include:

    • details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.
    • telephony log information, such as your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
    • Internet protocol address.
    • device event information, such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL.
    • cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account.

  • Location information

    When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, such as GPS signals sent by a mobile device. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example, provide information on nearby Wi-Fi access points and mobile towers.

  • Unique application numbers

    Certain services include a unique application number. This number and information about your installation (for example, the operating system type and application version number) may be sent to Google when you install or uninstall that service or when that service periodically contacts our servers, such as for automatic updates.

  • Local storage

    We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device, using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.

  • Cookies and anonymous identifiers

    We use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, which may include one or more cookies or anonymous identifiers sent to your device. We also use cookies and anonymous identifiers when you interact with services that we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or Google features that may appear on other sites.