Google recently a major change to the company's privacy policies that significantly alters the way the company tracks Internet users.
Previously, the company had the DoubleClick advertising engine outside of its core services like Gmail, Search, or YouTube. This allowed users to choose whether Google could use their information for advertising purposes, as long as they were opt-in to it.
Those who chose not to provide information to Google were essentially removing the right (and right) from the company to store "personal" information and their online activity for advertising purposes.
However, the change brought by the company's new privacy policy seems to change everything, less for old users and more for new ones.
The following sentence was removed from the previous privacy policy:
“We will not combine cookie information from DoubleClick with personally identifiable information unless we have your consent.”
And it was replaced with the following phrase:
“Depending on your account settings, your activity on other websites and apps, we may use your personal information to improve Google services and the ads served by Google.”
If you didn't understand, there is also an example that explains what the company says in detail:
This activity may come from your use of Google products like Chrome Sync or from your visits to websites and apps that partner with Google. Many websites and apps partner with Google to improve their content and services. For example, a website may use our advertising services (like AdSense) or analytics tools (like Google Analytics).
These products share information with Google about your activity. Depending on your account settings and the products you use (for example, when a partner uses Google Analytics in conjunction with our advertising services), this data may be associated with your personal information.
It's worth mentioning that the ads you see online are powered by DoubleClick. Think of Adsense for example: it can use personal information like your name or your web activity to deliver personalized ads just for you.
Google doesn't use all of your information for the Adsense example above. The content of emails from Gmail, for example, is not used to serve DoubleClick ads across the web.
But this change is enabled by default for new Google users. This means that every new Google account is automatically set to use personal information for tracking and advertising purposes.
What you can do: Check your Google Account activity to make sure your settings do not allow tracking and logging of events.
You'll need to open Activity Controls. There you'll find the settings for Web & App Activity. If you consider your privacy very important, disable any enabled options. Be sure to also uncheck the option for "Include Chrome browsing history and activity from sites & apps that use Google services."
Try it and let us know if it was enabled..
