Google collects your data to target you with ads

It’s hardly breaking news that Google collects your data – as we’re all too well aware, it stores details of everything you search for. However, this is still one of the strongest arguments for switching to an alternative search provider.

Officially, Google’s data collection is to “make services more useful for you”, but unofficially it’s so that data can be used to build a profile of you and your interests. This is then used to target you with more relevant adverts from its commercial partners.

You can view your advertising profile by going to https://myaccount.google.com and clicking ‘Data and privacy’ in the left-hand menu. Scroll down to the ‘Things that you’ve done and places where you’ve been’ section and select ‘Ad personalisation’. Here you’ll see information about your location, gender, parental status and age, and what Google deduces to be your hobbies and personal and professional interests (see screenshot below left). Some of its assumptions are likely to be incorrect, but it’s still creepy to discover how much Google knows about you.

Ads based on this data don’t only appear in your search results, but also track you around the web to the millions of other sites and apps in the Google Display Network (www.snipca.com/41834). Using an ad blocker such as ublock Origin (www.snipca.com/41842) will hide most of these adverts in your desktop browser, but it’s much harder to avoid them on your mobile device.

In fairness to Google, the company has responded to privacy concerns by making it easier to review and delete details of your stored searches, and to turn off ad personalisation (see screenshot left), which means you’ll still see adverts, but not targeted ones. But when other search engines are able to work perfectly well without gathering and ‘monetising’ your personal data, you don’t need to keep compromising your privacy every time you search for something online.