Privacy invasion

[Skinny rooster]

I don't know about you guys but I'm really getting annoyed with the way google just overrides our privacy. I stay off any social sites except this one but that doesn't seem to matter since they are taking control of everything. For example I use gmail for work and other important things. I was asked to "update" and now after I did, my emails are being read by some algorithm or such program. I know because if I send someone an email asking if they went to the store with their grandmother, I get a bunch of suggestion boxes to click on that say things like "no I will go later" and "yes I went" and "no she didn't want to go".

What the HECK!?! I can write my own responses without help from them!!! Now they have a new one, if I open my personal email at work, google grabs all my email titles and first few lines and places them into history, documents etc. Even if you delete them, some people can retrieve them. So if you had an email, "Appointment with heart doctor" it will show up even if you remove your email account from that computer, they can't read the whole email but often they can see the first line or two.
That drives me crazy, makes me want to use another account, why tick off users? Even worse are the little pop ups that ask to save your password and display it??? WHAT? I say no and they say we don't believe you... password: Rubberchickenfeet ahhhh! Now everyone knows!

[Jaye]

FYI, that Google feature is just for extremely lazy people who couldn't be bothered to key in their own reply, or just SO busy that they don't have time to put together their own personalized response.

[WLLady]

and did you know they track you even if your phone is in airplane mode??

[kenya]

Yes its very invasive, if you walk in a store when you come out google asks you to rate your visit. I mean what the hell, but thats life now so I just ignore it.
My husband loves it as he plays with them in his responses saying things like for Homesense order the saugage with hot peppers the bun is fantastic. For costco ride the ferris wheel better than the one at wonderland.

[LongCrow]

I would not use an email service that is with a company that is in the business of selling ads. I have been with a free service at zoho.com. They also have paid services but my free box can handle 1000's of email that I forward to my windows mail. I have never received even one ad from them to upgrade in 10 or more years. Highly recommend them. Also if you use DuckDuckGo as a search engine they do not keep track of your site visits.

[KimChick]

Yes its very invasive, if you walk in a store when you come out google asks you to rate your visit. I mean what the hell, but thats life now so I just ignore it.
My husband loves it as he plays with them in his responses saying things like for Homesense order the saugage with hot peppers the bun is fantastic. For costco ride the ferris wheel better than the one at wonderland.

On a bit of a different tangent, this reminded me of the time I had the chance to say, to a real person on the phone, who was representing Weed Man, "I don't use weed, man." The guy was nice enough to chuckle.

[baronrenfrew]

another private search worth using is startpage.com

[poultry_admin]

go to: https://myaccount.google.com and deactivate the features you don't want. Be prepared to get a long list of convenient features you might like to keep, that you will also loose if you opt out.
The store rating thing is driven through "maps" btw. All other settings are there, but maybe not the easiest to find or not the easiest to identify how they affect you. So, some time is needed.

FYI
for purposes of statistics, I use google to track traffic flow on this website (hence the cookies) and as of this year we use google search to improve the search function that came out of the box. If anyone is interested what I can see, let me know, I'll gladly share. If you love stats, it's AMAZING what they provide in the way of anonymous user data.

So, even here you are not "safe" from google knowing what you click on. Now, I need to dig a bit to make double sure, but I don't think that what you write gets to google directly. They do get it when they index our website for updates to help populate their google search function though. That got us the first search result if you looked for "what tapes work on Styrofoam" for a while. LOL

All this leads to being able to target advertising to stay at home moms in their early 30s with 2 kids under 4 years, voting conservative, driving Ford, in the area of Peterborough +-50km, liking knitting, do gardening, ... . All others won't see the ad.

[KimChick]

That last paragraph used to be me! Except, when it was, we didn't have the technology like we do today, and we didn't live in the Peterborough area. When the kids were little, the PC was a 486.

[Killerbunny]

Every time I get a Windows update I go and change my privacy settings to always prompt for cookies. It has usually changed my settings to accept everything!