If you’re online, it’s inevitable that some of your personal data will be shared.
While most of us brush this off as no biggie, you might not have grasped just how much is shared with the big tech firms we trust to hold our data. And when you start poking into this, things get a little… creepy.
TikTok user @leakalache explained this in a TikTok that went viral earlier this year.
In the 15-second clip she shows how you can find out what Google really knows about you in just a few simple steps.
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All you have to do is search for ‘ad settings Google’, sign in and find the section that says: ‘How your ads are personalized’.
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Google says ads are based on the personal information you’ve added to your Google account, data from advertisers and things that Google has ‘guessed’ about you.
For this Tiktoker, Google seemed to know her age bracket, gender, what languages she speaks and is even able to list her interests — which include somewhat niche things like architecture and auctions.
The TikToker urged her followers to ‘try it’ and try it they did.
After rushing to check their data, one commenter wrote: “OH GOD I TRIED IT. THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION.”
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Another alarmingly commented: "WHY DOES IT KNOW MY HOUSE INFORMATION AND INCOME WHATTT."
But Google hadn’t quite figured out everybody.
One user wrote: "Why does mine say that I'm 44+??? I'm literally 19"
Others are just outright refusing to give it a go, with one comment reading: "Nah I don't want my anxiety rising." Ignorance is bliss and all that.
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I couldn’t resist giving this a go myself, so I headed to ‘my ad centre’ to see what Google thought it knew about me. And yep, it is indeed creepy.
It was right on gender, age, relationship status, education level, if I owned a home and even if I was a parent.
One thing it got wrong though, was it seemed to think I worked in the healthcare industry, which I do not if you couldn’t tell from the fact I’m writing this article.
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The feature is of course easy enough to turn off if you’d rather not receive personal ads and share your data with Google. There’s a drop down on the top left of the screen where you can toggle off personalized ads.
Granted, this kind of feature does feel somewhat dystopian, but it has it’s uses. Some people might like receiving personalized ads as it makes their shopping journey a lot easier — crunching the data so you don’t have to.
There’s surprisingly a lot to look at in Google’s Ad Centre that I never even knew was there. You can even limit ads on certain topics. Definitely worth investigating on your own account.