💾 Archived View for gemlog.blue › users › spyware › 1676929777.gmi captured on 2024-08-31 at 20:01:50. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-03-20)
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Google Search is a search engine created and owned by Google.
Google Search collects your personal information and is heavily integrated with other services that collect your personal information. Google's privacy policy is written in a way that does not tell you which Google services are collecting which types of information, and instead ties all of its services into one privacy policy. So the best that can be done is to assume that by using any of Google's services at all, Google is trying to obtain all of the information detailed.
It's also important to note that this article only exists to provide a basic run-down on Google's spying, and is just here for completeness. It does not at all represent the full extent of Google's breaches of privacy, just because it is not really a secret to anyone that Google collects your information, so it is really not trying to be very detailed because it would not say anything new.
Searches made using Google Search are associated with your identity and recorded in Google's servers. From the privacy policy, Google makes it clear that:
"We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them"
Where "collect information" is clearly stated as such:
"This includes information like your usage data and preferences, Gmail messages, G+ profile, photos, videos, browsing history, map searches, docs, or other Google-hosted content. Our automated systems analyze this information as it is sent and received and when it is stored.
Google also confirms again that it stores your searches in its servers, in this quote:
"When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This includes: details of how you used our service, such as your search queries."
In this page of Google's privacy policy, Google confirms that they create profiles of their users interests:
"For example, we may use...information in your web history cookies to provide you with more relevant search results."
It's important to note that Google does not think that your search history is personal information, as long as it is not attached to your name. It does share this information with advertisers, as long as it is "not identifiable":
"We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services."
Google search allows you to sign-in using an account made on the Google Accounts spyware platform. This platform exists to collect personal information, and connects its users to other spyware services in the Google ecosystem. It attempts to collect phone numbers, and helps Google attribute the information it collects though all of its services to one user, increasing the accuracy of their internal profile of you.
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Bing is yet another spyware search engine that collects your information and sells it to advertisers. It's strongly recommended that you do not use Bing.
At some point Bing had a privacy policy, but Microsoft doesn't seem to be hosting it anymore. So, this article will look at the Microsoft Privacy Statement to help us understand what information Bing collects. Similarly to the privacy policies of Google and Apple, the Microsoft privacy statement eclipses the entire spyware platform and does not help you understand in great detail what kind of information one single program could be collecting. (although this policy is more specific)
From the Microsoft Privacy Statement:
"Microsoft collects data from you, through our interactions with you and through our products for a variety of purposes described below. [...] You provide some of this data directly, such as when you [...] submit a search query to Bing"
Later in the Interactions -> Device and usage data section of this statement, it is clarified again that Microsoft collects your: "Browse History. Data about the web pages you visit.", as well as your: "Images. Images and related information, such as picture metadata. For example, we collect the image you provide when you use a Bing image-enabled service."
Microsoft claims to store this information for an unlimited amount of time, but it claims that it will eventually anonymize this information in a process that takes 18 months to complete.
"Has Microsoft adopted and announced a specific retention period for a certain data type? For example, for Bing search queries, we de-identify stored queries by removing the entirety of the IP address after 6 months, and cookie IDs and other cross-session identifiers after 18 months."
From the Microsoft Privacy Statement:
"Microsoft may use data we collect to select and deliver some of the ads you see on Microsoft web properties, such as Microsoft.com, MSN and Bing."
So since your search history is part of the "data we collect", the natural conclusion is that, your search queries are being used to profile you for advertising. And of course, this is confirmed in this section:
"The ads that you see may be selected based on data we process about you, such as your interests and favorites, your location, your transactions, how you use our products, your search queries, or the content you view. For example, if you view content on MSN about automobiles, we may show advertisements about cars; if you search “pizza places in Seattle” on Bing, you may see advertisements in your search results for restaurants in Seattle."
From the Microsoft Privacy Statement:
"We may share data we collect with third parties, such as Oath, AppNexus, or Facebook (see below), so that the ads you see in our products, their products, or other sites and apps serviced by these partners are more relevant and valuable to you."
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Yahoo! search is a search engine made by Yahoo.
Yahoo! search is integrated into the Oath spyware ecosystem, which is a merger between Yahoo and AOL. When you use Yahoo! Search, your internet history is sent to Oath, and Oath will track you across the internet. This tracking is then sold to advertisers. The Oath Privacy Policy makes it difficult to know which parts of it refer to Yahoo! search, and which parts of it refer to other Oath services, so it's difficult to quantify the extent of data collection done by Yahoo! search specifically. (combining privacy policies is a common tactic to obfusicate privacy information)
It's important to notice that this is just scratching the surface at the extent of spying that the Oath spyware platform does to its users, and only includes information collection aspects of the Oath spyware platform that could be reasonably attributed to Yahoo! search.
Yahoo's privacy policy is actually called the "Oath" privacy policy, so it's not as simple to find. Yahoo search is integrated into the "Yahoo Account" spyware platform, which shares all of the information it collects with its parent company, Oath, including your browsing history. When you have an account connected to Oath, which would be an AOL account or a Yahoo account, your internet history is collected and associated with a unique user identity obtained through browser fingerprinting.
It's important to notice that this information will be collected whether you are signed in or not. The Oath Privacy Policy makes it clear that they fingerprint your computer and so can uniquely identify you no matter what. What is probably happening is that Yahoo will fingerprint your use of its services, so that you will be tracked through your usage of them, whether you have an account or not.
The Oath Privacy Policy makes a lot of statements about how it tracks its users across their devices and across the internet:
"We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data."
The Oath privacy policy clearly states that the information it collects from you is shared with advertisers:
"We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use."
"We also may use the information we have about you for the following purposes: ...
Help advertisers and publishers connect to offer relevant advertising in their apps and websites.....
Match and serve targeted advertising (across devices and both on and off of our Services) and provide targeted advertising based on your device activity, inferred interests and location information....
Create analytics and reports for external parties, including partners, publishers, advertisers, apps, third-parties and the public regarding the use of and trends within our Services and ads, including showing trends to partners regarding general preferences, the effectiveness of ads and information on user experiences...."
A LOT more could be written but this is probably enough to understand that Yahoo! search is spyware. If you want any more, the privacy policy should speak for itself.
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DuckDuckGo is a search engine created by Gabriel Weinberg and owned by Duck Duck Go, Inc.
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that claims to protect the privacy of its users. Since this a centralized service, there is no way to prove that it isn't spyware just by looking at the technology that it uses. There are some red flags that could cause you to doubt that this service is truly private, and so this article will just list them here to help you decide on whether or not to use this service. Ultimately there isn't proof that DuckDuckGo is spyware- but a few reasons to suspect it of being spyware. Even though, it's worth noting that DuckDuckGo offers an onion domain... so you don't need to trust it to use it as long as you access it through TOR.
Since the US Government has been known to compromise services similar to DuckDuckGo, it's reasonable to fear that it might compromise DuckDuckGo. We don't know if DuckDuckGo has been compromised by the US Government, but we do know that it is not a difficult task for the US Government to do that.
DuckDuckGo is not consistent with its privacy policy and has directly violated it before If a service cannot follow its own privacy policy, then you can't expect it to protect your privacy.
DuckDuckGo uses clear gifs from the domain "improving.duckduckgo.com". This is a tracking technique and can be used to collect analytics about your web browser. Whenever you use DuckDuckGo, several requests will be sent to this domain. This is of course not the kind of behavior that you would expect from a privacy concerned website, but there it is. Do you trust DuckDuckGo to collect "anonymous" analytics about you?
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