Total Google Surveillance: 5 Ways To Be Invisible

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Google shares data on the location of users with the police, reports The New York Times, citing its own sources. The authorities send an official request to the company, then the suspects are detained. But sometimes, based on Google data, innocent people go to jail.

Google transfers the geolocation data of its users to the US police, and law enforcement officers use this data as a basis for arresting suspects, and in some cases arresting innocent people.

Google stores the history of users' movements in a database called Sensorvault, and it is from there that information is issued to the police. The database stores data from hundreds of millions of devices around the world, collected by Google over the past 10 years. According to several current and former employees of the corporation, the base was not developed for the needs of law enforcement agencies.

Police need a court order to obtain data from the company. After a criminal case is opened, law enforcement officers send a request to Google. It indicates a geofence in which you need to identify suspects or eyewitnesses of the crime. For example, when there were explosions in Austin (Texas), they requested information on all devices in the area and in the same time frame.

The company transmits to the police the trajectories of all users on a given site at a given time. Usernames are not disclosed at this stage, they are hidden behind special identification numbers. Then the police select the necessary devices from a variety of devices and ask Google for more detailed information.

Representatives of the Washington state attorney's office interviewed by the publication argue that no one draws conclusions about a person's involvement in the commission of a crime based on Google geodata alone and that obtaining such evidence does not negate a full-fledged investigation.

It is not yet known the number of cases in which the suspects were arrested on a tip from Google. For the first time, law enforcement officers resorted to this practice in 2016, according to the source, and it was first announced publicly in 2018 in North Carolina. Since then, data from Google have been requested by law enforcement officers in California, Florida, Minnesota and Washington. The company now receives about 180 such requests per week.

The New York Times describes several cases of the use of the method by the police, when, based on Google data, innocent people were imprisoned. For example, in March 2018, police investigated the murder of a 29-year-old aircraft repair company employee, who was shot dead at his home in Phoenix, Arizona.

The police made a request to Google, and after 6 months it sent geolocation data obtained from four devices at the time when the murder occurred. The location of the car on the video from the security cameras and the data from Google about the phone coincided with the account of 24-year-old Jorge Molina, who was arrested on suspicion of murder.

The guy was imprisoned for a week, but during the investigation it turned out that Molina logged into the Google account from other people's smartphones, so he could be registered in Sensorvault in several places at once. Further it turned out that at the time of the murder, the young man was with his girlfriend, as evidenced by a receipt from Uber. Molina's house, where he lives with his mother and three siblings, is two miles from the crime scene. And the car was taken by his mother's ex-boyfriend, Marcos Gaeta, who was later arrested on suspicion of murder.

Molina was released, but the stress he experienced was still taking its toll on his health a few months later. In addition, the arrest was carried out at Molina's workplace, which is why he was fired. His car was confiscated for investigation purposes, but then returned. Molina's lawyer notes that law enforcement officers had good intentions when they used Google data, but they put too much trust in the imperfect system.

According to Google employees familiar with the inquiries, the Phoenix case demonstrates the promise and dangers of a new investigative technique that has exploded in use over the past six months. It can help solve crimes, but it can also frame innocent people.

At the moment, it is not completely clear how often investigations involving the tracking system from Google led to real arrests and sentences, because many cases remain open and requests are classified.

How to Get Rid of Google Tracking?

Spoiler: 100% - no way, it's easier then not to go online at all. Google knows exactly what you did last summer, where and with whom! However, it is not that difficult to reduce the amount of data collection without sacrificing usability. All you need to do is follow just five simple steps …

“If you use a proprietary product and don’t pay for it, then most likely you are the product” - write these simple but great words. In one form or another, this phrase has been encountered for a very long time. And unfortunately, the further, the more it is true. Google is not alone in this regard. For a simple estimate of the amount of data Google collects, skip ahead to step # 3. Impressed? And that's just what the company decided to show the user. And what other data is stored on the servers, probably no one knows. And the further it goes, the worse it gets. Even the Chrome browser in its latest version has actually turned into another Google service, and not just a program. Well, isn't it time to at least moderate the appetites of the IT giant and take care of your privacy at least a little?

⇡ # Step # 1: opt out of Google products

Yes, the simplest and most obvious step. It will still not be possible to completely abandon interaction with Google - the same ads, counters, captcha and other services will still come across you on the Internet and in applications. But this does not stop communication with the company to a minimum, both on the desktop and on mobile devices. What is worth looking at? We were lucky with the search, we have Yandex, and for foreign sites, DuckDuckGo is suitable, which especially emphasizes concern for the privacy of users, and even Bing, which has grown quite well in recent years. Just remember to change the default search in your browsers. Instead of Gmail, you can use just an endless number of alternative services. Here it is again "Yandex" and Mail.ru, and if you do not like them either, then you can look towards Outlook and Yahoo. In the case when you absolutely do not want someone to scan your mail for advertising purposes, it makes sense to look at paid services like ProtonMail, Zoho or FastMail. Cards? And again "Yandex"! Plus HERE, TomTom, MAPS. ME and OpenStreetMap. For lovers of perversion, there is Apple Maps.

There is nothing to say about the Google Play content store - there are dozens of sites for music, films, books. There are dozens of messengers too, and Google, in general, is not the best. Alternative cloud storage and online office suites are also plentiful. Microsoft offers both. Just for files there is "Yandex. Disk", Dropbox, "Cloud Mail.ru" and Mega (for privacy lovers). There are also quite a few browsers besides Chrome. One of the best now, of course, Firefox, but the choice is Opera, Vivaldi, Yandex Browser, pave, Edge. On mobile devices, there is also a lot to choose from. Paranoid people can, for example, abandon the Google keyboard in Android (and give all the typed text to another company, of course). Is there anything for which there is no substitute? Actually, there are, but for the average user there are only a couple of such products. First, it's obviously YouTube, because you won't find so much content anywhere else. Secondly, Google Translate, although other services are gradually catching up with it.

⇡ # Step # 2: disable Google data collection

If you do not want to completely abandon Google products or there is no possibility, then you should at least set up interaction with it. In general, Google has been offering a short privacy settings wizard for some time now, where the basic settings for the information collected are collected. You can use it, or you can manually go through the individual items. It is up to you to decide what to turn off and what not to turn off. For example, the history of apps and web searches significantly affects how search works, which can be handy. You can turn off personalized results directly for the Google search engine.

The only thing that, perhaps, should not be touched is the item "Information from devices", which is also responsible for saving the settings of mobile devices in the cloud. It's just convenient. For Android devices, there is also another controversial option - wireless positioning in addition to GPS. It improves navigation accuracy, but periodically sends various data to Google, albeit anonymized, as claimed. If you don't like it, then you can also turn it off.

In addition, you can simply opt out of some of Google's products if you don't need them. Beforehand, it is strongly recommended to download all available data so as not to lose it. Please be patient as it can take a very long time to export. And think twice if you really need it (that is, you don't need it in this case). There is one more important point: information can also be collected by third-party applications that have access to your account. Check if there is any site you have forgotten for a long time among them and if some programs want too much data. Exactly the same advice - check permissions - is useful for any other systems, be it browser extensions, Windows or iOS with Android.

⇡ # Step # 3: clear google history

To assess the scale of the problem, just log into your Google account and go to the general view of activity or a detailed list of recorded actions, as well as the history of working with devices and to a list of almost all purchases associated with the account (this mainly includes data from Gmail). This is unlikely to be all, because some of the data that can be deleted simply does not appear in these lists. But still, it makes sense to even remove them in case of concern. In the settings, there is a fairly convenient filter by product type and date, so you don't have to clean everything up. Once again, we repeat that Google uses this data, among other things, to improve the search and work of services for you personally.

For maps, everything is a little trickier. In the general activity stream, only requests, views of the area are recorded, and so on. But the so-called visited places in the terminology of Google (location history) can be viewed in this section. In the same place at the bottom right there is an icon in the form of a gear, where the coveted item for clearing history is located. Please note that it will take some time to delete the data, so there is no need to frantically refresh the page. In the same menu, you can clean up personal tags and places marked on the map.

⇡ # Step # 4: set up Google ads

All the data that is mentioned in the first steps, Google uses to slip the most suitable advertising from its point of view. This is the main business of the company. It is still impossible to completely abandon advertising, unless, of course, resort to the services of blockers, which, strictly speaking, also successfully sell the service of non-blocking of certain campaigns and companies. However, you can turn off so-called interest-based advertising. That is, Google will still show you some kind of advertising, but it has every chance, oddly enough, to get bored very quickly, since it does not shine with variety. Seriously, I’ve been haunted on YouTube for months by the same series of commercials for a product that I don’t really need.

You can turn off personalization of ads on Google services in one step. But that's not all! There is a special option "Recommend friends", which can show your reviews in various services to your friends, and vice versa, show their reviews to you. To disable interest-based advertising from Google on other sites, you will need to install the IBA Opt-out extension. The company also offers the Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on to disable the web counter and Google analytics. At the same time, it is recommended to install the Protect My Choices extension, which will allow you to remember the settings for refusing interest-based advertising for other companies. There are even Android and iOS apps for the same purpose. EFF offers its Privacy Badger solution to block spyware and other trackers.

But it's still worth a try. A special site offers to scan the settings of various ad networks. After this - slow, I must say - the process below you need to press the Opt out of all button, wait and … press again, and press again until the number of unanswered networks decreases to a minimum or zero. For residents of Europe, there is a separate similar service that also offers browser extensions. If you use VPN often or "live" on a corporate network, then these can come in handy. True, the reviews about these systems are contradictory: they say, they do not always work.

⇡ # Step # 5: configure Google Chrome

If there is no way (or desire) to abandon the Chrome browser, then again, you can at least delve into its settings to improve privacy. The main options are found under Settings> Advanced> Privacy & Security. Here, in principle, you can turn off all the checkboxes, except for two: sending a ban (this is the Do not track function) and safe browsing. The first allows you to partially get rid of tracking movements from site to site, although not all resources are able to work with it. The purpose of the second is clear from the name - this function protects you from phishing and viruses. Just below, in the language settings, you can turn off the page translation suggestions.

There is also a whole group of content settings. If you have never done this, then go through the parameters of each item and make sure that there are no extra permissions for individual sites. In general, the default recommended settings are not harmful. Separately, you can deal with cookies, thanks to which, in many ways, user actions are tracked. First, it is worth turning on the blocking of cookies from third-party sites. Secondly, you can sacrifice convenience and enable the option to delete cookies when you close your browser. In this case, each time you start Chrome, you will have to log in to all web services again. Similar settings, but to a lesser extent, are available in the mobile version of Chrome for Android. In it, by the way, you can disable the Data saver function, which actually passes part of the traffic through Google's servers.

But … this does not concern Google itself. In Chrome 69, logging into any of the company's services automatically includes logging into the browser itself, and vice versa. You can disable this feature by typing chrome: // flags // # account-consistency in the address bar and selecting Disable for the Identity consistency between powser and cookie jar parameter. To activate, you need to restart your browser. However, if this does not bother you, then you can at least set up the synchronization of all kinds of data by disabling the transfer of unnecessary or too sensitive (passwords, for example). In the end, no one forbids, at the same time, to clean up the entire history of actions in Chrome (chrome: // settings / clearpowserData).

We should also remind you that Incognito mode is not a substitute for the above steps. Moreover, in an amicable way, every time you log in, you should check at least the basic Google privacy settings. And all the aforementioned extensions also need to be allowed to work in incognito mode, and it does not interfere with browsing sites with ad settings. However, all this practically does not protect against logging, for example, IP addresses and other information that can be retrieved from the browser or application by the server owners.

⇡ # What else can be done?

Strictly speaking, nothing more significant that would not affect the comfort of using the Internet and applications, in general, can not be done. For the sake of interest, you can visit the Panopticlick and webkay services or go through the powserLeaks sections to assess how accurately you can be identified on the Internet. And these are just the basic techniques that can be used to track a user. Even a VPN doesn't always work. What to do? Alas, the topic of online privacy is too broad, but if you really care about this, then there are a couple of sites with tips and sets of programs and web services: PRISM peak and Privacytools. However, they will not help to protect your data 100%, so you have to either completely go offline, or relax and have fun.