Ban Google spying on you online to profit from your private information
Introduction – How to ban Google spying on you
This article provides information on how to ban Google from obtaining private information about you online and using it to create a personal profile on you. A profile that the company and its advertising-company partners use to place customised adverts across your path online.
If you use Gmail or can log in to Google’s YouTube, you have a Google account. All of Google’s free software and services or paid-for services require a Google account if they require a login or support.You can operate several accounts, but Google prefers that you only have one account for everything. For example, one account to access Gmail and YouTube accounts and a business account, such as AdSense for website advertising.
List of Google products – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Advertising_services
You can see all of the available apps after you log in to your account by clicking on the icon showing as nine dots (arranged as 3 by 3 dots) in the upper right-hand corner, Manage your account’s settings by clicking on the your image or an alternative image that you put up in that space.
Use a VPN and the DuckDuckGo search engine
Note that if you use Gmail, Google’s computers read all of your emails and pick out keywords and phrases that provide information on your likes and tastes. That information goes into building your personal profile. It’s much the same with Google’s YouTube. What you watch tells Google plenty about your likes and tastes. The only apparent way to prevent that from happening is by disabling personalization.
Personally, I don’t trust Google. For more information, web-search for: Google illegal information gathering. Therefore, no one can be sure that spying is not taking place even after personalization is disabled. – For that reason, I use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that accesses the web from servers in a foreign country, such as Germany. Just doing that makes it impossible for Google to identify me. I also use the excellent DuckDuckGo search engine (that blocks tracking) instead of Google’s search engine.
“How your ads are personalized”
Reports online about the effectiveness of the personalization swings between scarily accurate to way off beam. I suppose that its accuracy depends wholly on how much information about yourself is in Google’s hands via its so-called free offerings or is online.
The only apparent way to ban Google from creating a personal profile of you is to do so in your Google account’s settings.
1. – Log in to your Google account. From its home page, click on the Manage your data and personalization link that appears under Privacy & personalization. See the image below.
2. – To make your categorised list appear, scroll down to Ad personalization and click on Go to ad settings.
A list like the one in the image below appears, but only if you have ad personalization enabled. If it is disabled you have the means to enable it.
Turn ad personalization OFF to get rid of it
The image below shows what appears when ad personalization is disabled. Have a look at what is paused. In my case, it was Google’s monitoring of my Gmail and YouTube usage. The ads I viewed in Gmail and what I watched on YouTube. Both showing zero because I have personalization disabled.
