Googler, opinions are my own.<p>Google has been doing this for a while, as can be seen when the reporters wrote about it 2 years ago: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/17/18629789/google-purchase-history-gmail-email-receipts" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/17/18629789/google-purchase-...</a>. HN discussed it at the time: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942219" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942219</a><p>You can see the information it has already collected if you use Google, by visiting: <a href="https://myaccount.google.com/purchases" rel="nofollow">https://myaccount.google.com/purchases</a><p>Though oddly my list is empty. I wonder if I disabled this feature at some point?<p>The help docs: <a href="https://support.google.com/accounts?p=orders&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/accounts?p=orders&hl=en</a>, explain how you can delete this data if you want to.
Wow. It's not even just everything you buy from Google--from the post it seems like they actively compile and organize the data from every purchaser transaction that touches your GMail account.<p>I think we deserve to hear from Google about this one. Unless we have already?
Amazon's order status emails ("Shipped", "Out for Delivery", etc.) used to show the items in the order and how much I paid for them. They stopped doing that[0] last year presumably because of evil behavior like this.<p>[0] <a href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/06/01/unhelpful-amazon-order-confirmation-e-mails/" rel="nofollow">https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/06/01/unhelpful-amazon-order-co...</a>
Isn't this controlled by the "Gmail smart features" setting, which they explicitly had a modal dialog for last year, to make everyone explicitly decide to enable or disable?<p><a href="https://blog.google/products/gmail/new-settings-smart-features-and-personalization-gmail/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.google/products/gmail/new-settings-smart-featur...</a><p>Seems a bit odd for the poster to enable it, and then complain. The text seems fairly clear.<p>Oh, wait... The screenshot shows the Takeout as being from 2019. Why post about it now?
I wish there was an online service that would let users poison their own data. Like allowing me to intentionally get emails about random stuff, shopping receipts etc from absurd entities just to throw the profilers off our scent. Would be fun.<p>Same with something I can run Google Maps with my account logged in so that Google thinks I am one heck of a super traveler, and shopper of things.<p>Something that watches random YouTube videos for me, and randomly clicks on ads for me.. :-)<p>Uploads random photos into a Google Photos account for me :-)<p>That’s be heck of a lot fun!
Edison [1] (who was acquired [2] today by a company that sells your data to hedge funds) does precisely this too, except they sell all your data to third parties. Google at least keeps it in-house I guess?<p>Privacy is such an illusion.<p>[1] <a href="https://mail.edison.tech/" rel="nofollow">https://mail.edison.tech/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.edison.tech/blog/edison-acquired-by-yipit" rel="nofollow">https://www.edison.tech/blog/edison-acquired-by-yipit</a>
I wish I could pay $20/month for Gmail without the spying and data collection, actual customer support, with a guarantee that my account wouldn't get locked because of one of their fucking mistakes.
Google reads your Gmail. They admit it. They've never hidden it, as far as I know. If you choose to use Gmail, you've chosen to let Google's computers read, analyse, and store information about the contents of your email.
If you own your email domain, it takes all of fifteen minutes to move to something like Fastmail. You just switch the MX records, run a GMail import, and you're done. Plus, Fastmail's UI is <i>much</i> faster than GMail's.
From the same tooter:<p>>If you use #Google Photos, there's a non-zero chance that there are secret, yet public URLs attached to your photos that allow un-authenticated access to every picture in your account. Mine did, and I tested the addresses in incognito and tor browsers and they worked. #privacy<p><a href="https://mastodon.social/@gerowen/106978306449754832" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.social/@gerowen/106978306449754832</a>
I'm kinda confused which part of this is news? That Google extracts purchase information from mails? That's a feature that's been even exposed in UI for ages! Or that Google uses incoming mail to enrich user profiles? I would have thought that to be obvious? If you put 1+1 together, then it seems pretty unsurprising that they have purchase histories of users.<p>Maybe I'm just too jaded at this point
Worse, the stores are feeding them this info in easy to digest packets:<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference</a>
Very unlikely that they keep the record indefinitely after you delete the email. Instead, it's likely that the systems that store the derived information are not transactionally connected to the email database. Deletions would be reflected eventually, but only according to the periodicity with which the two systems are synchronized.
I remember when you uninstalled Chrome, it opened your other default browser to display a webpage with the message "You have uninstalled Chrome. We're sorry to see you go!"<p>That entire maneuver was just to plant tracking cookies into your OTHER browser, for use to track you later on. Dirty, dirty stuff.
I have always wondered if google can see the YouTube, Gmail passwords, not from the database,but you can see your own passwords in the browser in plain text and since all the apps are theirs, a keylogger would be impossible to detect.<p>Another thing is, do they have a back up of data from the Myaccount. Subdomain that users delete.<p>Still I trust google and amazon more than Microsoft and apple and Facebook. Just me personal view, I could be totally wrong. The ones I trust are simply more open about data storage and have less dark patterns and clandestine TCS.
But yes, wide spread Gmail usage will make google see many things and they will collect a lot of data. Probably even more delicate data than what Facebook gets to see.
Google should offer a paid gmail service with a detailed privacy contract. Presumably they are not spying on businesses that pay for G Suite. Perhaps this already exists.
I for one am <i>very</i> grateful to see Googlers coming out to post on this thread. PM of GMail?! Thank you.<p>Replies here show a lot of animosity and distrust... not saying I disagree in general, but on this particular point the response from multiple levels has been unequivocal that "this is not happening", and I believe it.
Of course they do. Gmail's logs of essentially your entire economic activity (travel, flights, driving directions, online orders, food delivery, etc), tied to your identity, is the most valuable thing Google has as an advertiser. (They even buy purchase logs from retailers, tied to phone numbers; recall that you can't get a Google Account without a phone number.) This is why Amazon started somewhat redacting the transactional emails they send out when you buy stuff.<p>Only a fool would use Gmail.
Good thing they keep track of all the spam I get! The membership to something long forgotten, marketing emails from US shops(I don’t live in US anymore) and some developer mailing lists from that one time I had to write to get support.<p>If they are so evil and clever, I at least make them work through a lot of bull shit before they profile me.<p>My emails are at Fastmail as a paid user. Hopefully they are away from advertising companies. But, any Gmail user I have emailed would leak that info to Google.
I love how people are surprised/shocked by this. It's perfectly in line with Google's character, yet every time another example of that character is highlighted people are still surprised. Perpetual surprise. Oh, this fire burnt my finger... oh, that fire burnt my finger... oh, yet another fire that burnt my finger... At what point do realise you're not going to find a cold fire?
Mine showed up nothing even though I buy things every now and then. Google offered to "search for other purchases in Gmail" but I declined. I would be interested to know what Google <i>does</i> do with information in my email account other than the email service.
Is Google Takeout only limited to GMail? I am pretty sure this transaction data can also be gathered via Analytics, so I guess there would be no foul play on the part of GMail. But of course, you are logged into your Google Profile <i>because</i> you use GMail.
Why don't companies like Amazon who care about customer privacy have a field in the account settings, where you could post a public key of some kind (e.g. PGP or S/MIME), so that all email they send you would be encrypted?
Not sure why people are surprised by this anymore. Google is SkyNet, then again most people don’t care. They use the catchphrase, “I got nothing to hide.”, which misses the point entirely.
Are google workspace accounts treated the same? I have several fill me domains hosted with Google duo curious if this behavior tracks over to their paid products
One of these days some simple soul is going to pick up purchase data for the rich and powerful and read it. Then the rich and powerful will be embarassed.
- why dont you buy everything with a credit card? they pay you!<p>- Oh, I dont know. Maybe i think my data is worth more than what they give you in kickbacks.
So forgive me for just being a slave to the downvotes, but this is the daily reminder to think critically. What I'd like to know from this user to clarify what's happening here is whether they are a Google Pay user, and if they have "Show bills & receipts from Gmail" enabled in Google Pay. It defaults to off, for what it's worth, but if you enable the feature it might have the effect of pinning this data even if the source emails are deleted.
User X: buys dildo<p>Google: X likes dildos<p>Dildo Salesperson: Google, who likes dildos?<p>Google: X<p>User X: deletes dildo receipt email<p>Salesperson: Is X still into dildos?<p>Google: Yeah, they just don't like receipts.
I remember when Google Mail launched on April Fool's Day in 2004. I thought the 1GB of storage for email was a prank because it was a huge amount to offer for free.<p>I made an account just to try it out but then I saw all the advertisements it added. Seeing ads based on the content of my email was really creepy. I stopped using Gmail and now I pay Fastmail for my email. It seems worth it to me.
Who here is buying things with or through Google? Who actually has ever used "Google Pay"? Hell, I make it my religious duty to keep my GMAIL account under 15GB at all times, so I never, ever, ever have to reveal any of my banking information to Google.<p>I would expect nothing less of Hacker News veterans.
This data capture alone was the sole factor that drove me to conclusively exit Gmail. There were many reasons I might have over the years, but <i>this</i> is what solidified feelings into actions for me.
I'd expect nothing less, if I ask Google assistant about my last purchases, I expect it's going to show me the data. It's bad enough that Amazon doesn't include what you are purchasing in the email and that you have to open the site to see...
Am I the only person who would never think to give google,facebook, twitter my credit card? Or would never pay them any money regardless?<p>After linking your credit history the targeting and linking of information that would follow would be a privacy blackhole that would be hard to recover from.