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Greetings good people.
Happy Monday, or whatever day you are reading this. Glad this workday is behind me, not because it was particularly hard, but my sleep patterns have been messed up ever since the attempted Parker Solar Probe launch attempt I blogged about two days ago (off patterns are exacerbated by not going to bed as early as I should have over the last few nights). Can’t believe I napped not only on Saturday but on Sunday as well. Gotta break that. After some coding tonight, I’m flat out turning in, within the hour.
Well, thirteen days into this sabbatical and the insight has been becoming clearer. My tech/podcasting/blogging brotha DarrenKeith, are continuing to discuss this journey we are on, exchanging relative articles to the “cut back” and the resurrected freedbom of spending less time on “the scroll”, creating more content through blogging, etc. Nothing wrong with consuming content, but my desire is to always make sure I am getting an ROI that results in moving me forward in the goals I’m trying to achieve.
Today a particular article referenced the age old story of how social media sites use us as product, harvesting the data collected from our likes, searches, and similar to share with marketers in order to show us more ads about they THINK we like. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
On a similar note, I ironically came across a somewhat disturbing (yet not not new) article about how Google tracks your movements, even when you have Location turned off. I thought having Location turned off meant exactly but according to this article, that is not entirely true. I won’t get deeply on what the article states, as I think you’ll get a clearer understanding if you read it, but the short of amounts to something I did last year, despite what my iPhone settings are, and that is to go My Activity – Google and adjust your location and Web App activity settings there, accordingly, for all your Google profiles. As you read the article, you will read about Google’s “Google-ease” (as I call it) stating that they are quite clear about how to keep your timeline activity and similar private, however (like Facebook’s famed chameleon privacy settings) that clarity is not apparent to the average Google user. So, yeah…read the article and adjust your My Activity settings as necessary.
“How do I do that?”, you say? Check this out.
Make sure check out the Google Dashboard page of the site as well I’ve had my location and web activity tracking on lock since last year.
POST EDIT (16 Aug 18): AP News updates the above story saying the Google has updated the erroroneous language on their Help page. The article is here.
POST EDIT (20 Aug 18): Reuters News reports of the first lawsuit, here.
Ok folks, “that’s all she wrote, the pencil broke”…I’m out.
Be good…
Fresh!
Great post Brother (and yes, rest is important so REST UP. 🙂 ).
We talk all the time about how “Free” is not really “Free”. We have screamed from the rooftops in regards to how people need to treat these platforms. The latest article in regards to Google tracking our movements always is no surprise at all. What’s laughable is how many people are shocked this is occurring. You’re a kind, forgiving gentleman…me on the other hand… LOL
Maybe it’s me getting up in age and I’m becoming more of a Cranky Geek. Is this underhanded and somewhat sinister on Google? Yep. But in the end they’re providing a service for free and again we as consumers pay one way or another…in this case we pay with our personal data.
Simply put, Americans who are whining about this “latest” news, if don’t wanna be tracked, either learn the product, the app settings, learn your device or don’t use your device and don’t tweet/post/share on IG what ya doing or where you’re going.
Grow up America.