As a computer technician, I speak with people every day who are concerned about the privacy of their information. Most people are aware that when they use popular websites, their activity is tracked to some extent, but few people fully appreciate the scope of what occurs.
Google Maps has a feature that can display live traffic information. I regularly use this feature when taking trips, and it is astonishingly accurate, often down to a few feet. The reason it can be so accurate is that it uses location data from all smartphones that use Google services with location tracking enabled. This data is used to calculate the traffic speed on every street at all times, which is then compared to the average recorded speed to create the traffic map.
In order for this feature to work, smartphones that have Google services enabled send their location to Google at regular intervals. This data is not only used for traffic maps and other similar features, but is also stored by Google. Google also makes your location history visible to you, so you can view it at any time and compare where Google thinks you have been to where you actually were. You will probably find that it is very accurate!
Every time you make a Google search, it is also logged. By analyzing their vast numbers of stored searches, Google is able to do things like make the suggested searches more helpful for everyone, tailor them for what they think individual users are more likely to search for, or target advertising content to them. You can view your complete Google search history here.
You may have noticed that both of these links have “delete my history” options somewhere on the page. Deleting the history will prevent you from seeing it if you visit that page again, but it is generally accepted that Google does not ever delete user data from their backend, only mark it as hidden so the user can no longer see it.
You may be starting to get a clearer picture of how much of your personal information is no longer private, but it may go much deeper than that. In the last few years, unconfirmed reports have surfaced on the Internet of Google potentially analyzing all input that is received by smartphone microphones that they have background access to. For instance, someone who normally has no interest in sports and has never searched for sports-related terms will watch a football game for the first time and start to see Google advertisements related to football a few hours later. If these reports are accurate, the implications are very serious. The idea that a text transcript of all of the conversations that my smartphone has ever been present for is sitting on a Google server somewhere is horrifying.
I have been singling out Google because they have been relatively open about what kinds of data they store, but in the tech community it is accepted that virtually every such organization engages in these types of practices to some degree, without even mentioning what the NSA and the other three-letter agencies do.
You may be wondering how you can prevent these types of information about you from being stored. The unfortunate answer is that realistically, you can’t. You can resolve to never use a computer or phone again and only buy things in cash, but if you are subscribed to an email newsletter about tech concepts, that is probably not an appealing idea. Even if you were to do it, it would not completely protect you from data about you being stored. You may say something that is picked up by the microphone on someone else’s smartphone, and transmitted to who knows where. Your face will probably appear on security camera footage somewhere, and then potentially stored in a database where it is processed by ever-improving facial recognition algorithms.
The closest thing to being completely isolated from all of this is to live completely off the grid, in a home that you constructed yourself, eating food that you grow or hunt yourself, and never returning to a civilized area. However, this probably would not be a very fulfilling or enjoyable life. And at any rate, if you look hard enough, you will still be able to see a Google Earth satellite passing overhead.