I give all my data to google, use most of their service and answer to they survey.
I care about my public privacy obviously, but I do not about private services that can satisfy my lazyness.
I give all my data to google, use most of their service and answer to they survey.
I care about my public privacy obviously, but I do not about private services that can satisfy my lazyness.
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Maybe it's not that you don't understand the danger or don't consider it real or significant, but that this is self-destructive behavior?
Have you considered that it's actually crippling depression that causes this?
I think it might be. Because I have the same issue.
Thank you for pointing this out. I gotta say that I'm also guilty of this. I trust mostly google with my information, and access many services using my g-account for authentication. I manage my mail with gmail, and basically use all their services constantly and I don't mind sharing data with them, and very rarely I ask myself if I should mind.
On top of this comes the PGP key for mail, which I normally don't use (and remember that was a pain to set up back in the days).
I used to use FB for authentication, but I'm decoupling those services lately. Still, the amount of different secure passwords get overwhelming, so the "master key" of using Google as auth for other services is still appealing.
I might be just lazy but getting of the grid, although for some easy, requires more effort than just share my data in exchange of services. I haven't been very convinced yet of this being dangerous. I hope this post shows some enlightenment.
Because Google's goals don't necessarily align with your goals (you want to be happy I presume, Google wants to be profitable, among other things of course, but profitably is one of the main drives), and there is no reason to believe they will in the future. It's like allowing someone close to you, know everything about you. When someone have information about you, how you work, what triggers you, what makes you do X or Y, then it becomes a lot easier to manipulate you to suit their needs.
It won't be drastic, it won't be immediate, but it will happen over an extended period of time.
So, if you're fine with a company molding you to that extent, then I suppose being lazy is no big deal.
Depending on who you are.
Google collects data that might reveal your relationship status (e.g your preference), school/working place, life events (e.g. new child) and location (e.g. next vacation place).
The more Google knows about you, the more they are able to list all your online presence with a simple google search. You can be a victim of identity theft, business email compromise or target in general. E.g, I can search your name and see on linkedIn that you're a system admin or handle a server. I can use that to further social engineer or guess your credentials. You might have also posted something in the past that can be used against you.
An extreme but common example: You've been googling for vacancies. A hacker managed to figure that out and found out you've applied for a specific company. He/She then fakes an email/phone call using the information they found online offering you an interview. They then ask you to fill in a form. Which happens to be a malware, that you open on your company network. And infects the computers with ransomware.
I moved away from google services about a year ago. I also deleted almost all my social media account. It was tough. But I like that privacy now.
As they say in security. It's easy to not be scared of things you didn't know exists.
I wasn't talking just about google but online services in general. Be wary about what you share, here are some good video about security and hacking:
youtube.com/watch?v=4gR562GW7TI
youtube.com/watch?v=F7pYHN9iC9I
To me the biggest issue with aggressive data collection is not whether Google can read the goofy memes I email to my friends. It’s more about building the capabilities for algorithmic redlining and being unaccountable for it as a private company.
Although I am not that paranoia, I don't like the idea that Google knows everything from me, so I shifted away from using my google credentials as login for other sites. An easy alternative for that is to use a password manager. I use LastPass for that, but there are more. If you don't like the idea of having all your passwords in the cloud, you can use KeePass, which can be used as a portable app.
Second easy fix is to shield your social media accounts from people that have no business looking at your business. In FB, you can set the default visibility for your posts to be visible for friends only and not for the whole world. Then, don't post pictures of your drivers license, creditcard, bankcard, passport, id card etc. You might find this obvious, but if you search for it, you will be amazed at how many people do this.
Last tip: since a lot of services offer a 'password forgotten?' service where they send a password reset link to your email, protect your email with a two factor authentication. If someone gets access to your mail, they can get access to all of your accounts. So protect it like it's a fort.
More info here: google.nl/search?q=setup+gmail+two...
As long as you don't encourage others not to care as well, it's only dangerous for you. By not caring you could make yourself subject to fraud, indentity theft and other crimes. At the very least I would recommend that you review your privacy settings for google: privacy.google.com/take-control.html. For most online services nowadays (maps, drive) you will find a good (maybe not perfect) open-source alternative (openmaps, nextcloud). Being open-source, these alternatives usually provide more privacy out-of-the-box as they have a hard time hiding any malicious code that would spy on you.
While Google surely is not the government, your government probably will be able to fetch your data from their databases.
Other than that, the biggest threat from Google is probably that they tend to shut down their services.