https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
I don't know what it says for you, but for me it lists everything I do in my life. The restaurants I look at in the Seamless app. The Reddit posts I clicked on in the Reddit app. Every single YouTube video I watch. Everything I search for. All of the places I went yesterday and in the last 6 months.
And these are only my "explicit" actions. Now imagine that Google also passively knows every single web address I look up via DNS? We share private browsing sessions to them all the time regardless of in-cognito mode or any other privacy safeguards.
OK, but it's still used to gather more information about how people are using the internet - what domains are popular, where they are being loaded from, etc. etc. etc.
We don't correlate or combine information from our temporary or permanent logs with any personal information that you have provided Google for other services.
Emphasis on personal information and provided. It does not say anything about non personal or inferred personal information imo.
> “Google Public DNS does not PERMANENTLY store personally identifiable information.”
You have to be very, very careful with services like this especially when it comes to Google, Facebook and Microsoft (and the companies they own), they use weasel wording in documents like this almost all the time and it’s clearly with intent to /seem/ as if they’re good citizens rather than to _prove_ that they are.
https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-resolvers
My Google activity page shows a big fat "No Activity". I have no doubt that they have plenty of my personal data rattling around on various servers, but Google at least pay lip service to offering you control over your data. European data regulators would be extremely displeased if they learned that these controls don't actually do what they purport to do.
You mean 3x faster for you, right? We're talking about a geographically distributed system here... for me it's not too different. Or do you mean their DNS servers are somehow by their nature 3x faster than Google's at responding?
Google I have essentially no trust in at all anymore (or maybe ever), Cloudflare I trust to a ‘reasonable’ degree; by that I mean I don’t believe they would (at the and leading up to the time of writing this comment) sell identifiable user data from their 1.1.1.1 DNS service and they have a very high technical skill level when it comes to internet security especially with regards to routing and network metadata. However it’s still not ideal or even slightly close to perfect security and while I’d trust Cloudflare over Google in a heartbeat - like anything that could change and better options that are also easy to use may (will likely) pop up.
That’s bananas.
edit: to answer my own question, it looks like OP is misinformed, here is the (very explicit) privacy policy about their DNS service: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy
note that in the (wonderful) GDPR world, its very hard for Google to do a sleight of hand with this stuff and actually be doing anything mischievous.
Unless I missed a press release announcing Google's acquisition of Seamless and Reddit, this seems impossible. AFAIK MyActivity doesn't track what you do inside non-Google apps.
And it's been saying that saying that since I clicked 'Activity controls' on the side there, and unticked every box.
I don't for a moment believe it's all Google has on me, but you don't have to live with it.
I use a different Gmail account for maps.
I use DuckDuckGo for search.
Instead of Google I use third parties for everything else they do that they listed on here that they track.
My history/activity on their servers was limited outside of tracking my location.
I would love a decent alternative to Google Maps but nothing I’ve used comes close.
There are limits, however, to how private you can get. Most people have email accounts through google, which means if you correspond with someone by email, even if your email isn't gmail, google is still analyzing what you wrote (they claimed to no longer be doing this, but I have no reason to believe them). As such, it is your job (not the parent specifically, but anyone reading this) to fight back against google's monopoly on information! Set up a private mail server for friends and family. Pressure work to use amazon or microsoft (not much better, but better nevertheless) for enterprise services over google. (This one may be easier as there are legitimate horror stories regarding gcp and gsuite that you can point to, such as the recent incident of someone's gcp account getting completely frozen without warning and reason for 3 days.) Above all, however, make sure not to look like you're wearing a tinfoil hat. Sound reasonable and if someone doesn't want to switch, don't push too hard; you lose credibility that way.
Crazy, interesting, and a little scary.
It knows my political affiliation, movies I like, music I listen to, kind of work I do, my financials, my weaknesses as a programmer, what clothes my kids wear, what books I read, what mobile apps I use and how often, videos I watch and who the fuck knows what else under the covers.
Disgusting. How does one run away from this?
A lot of people are worried about the privacy implications of using Google's DNS resolver. Paranoia is good, but it's probably overblown here. As far as I know, the primary objective of the project is to provide a fast, accurate DNS resolver, not to collect data. So much so that when it launched, it was originally called 'Honest DNS', as you can see on this bizarre Twitter account: https://twitter.com/honestdns
edit: Also of interest, Google does disclose exactly what data is logged, for the paranoid and curious: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on this. All of my knowledge of this service comes from being an end user, on the outside. Hopefully I didn't mess up any of the details.)
They introduced it as ISPs were starting to inject advertising via their own DNS, which competes with Google's core business (it's easy to forget that the overwhelming majority of Google's revenue comes from advertising). That's not to say this isn't a good move from Google, but it's very much aligned with their business interests.
This is mentioned in TFA, along with a Wikipedia link [0] to an entry mentioning several errant ISPs who "use DNS hijacking for their own purposes, such as displaying advertisements".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_hijacking#Manipulation_by_...
cough OpenDNS cough
I always assumed it was to improve speed and security on the web.
First, outright faking of dns resolution. Maybe to switch ads on internet pages. Maybe to falsify the pages entirely. Remember how internet in hotels worked 10 years ago ?
Second, lying to improve cost metrics for isps. Say, lying to cdns'es about the users location to use the cheapest connection for the isp. Or just lying to give users a bad connection and save on bandwidth.
Third censorship. Mostly dumb organisations' censorship. School networks in early 2000s are a good example.
Fourth, special support for a number of their products. Starting with, of course, their own cdns, but I don't think it'S limited to that.
I'm not sure you truly comprehend that a few dozen individuals have access some of the most intimate details on the lives of billions of people and they can do pretty much whatever they like with that, barring any roadblocks from the impotent US privacy laws. And not being part of the game is not really an option any more when almost all your friends and relatives are playing.
This is crazy when one thinks about it: whether I want it or not, my information will end up in the databases of some corporation. And I was born before this craziness, but a significant number of people will have their whole lives stored there and the only way to have a modicum of control over our data is the GDPR.
All the vulnerable aspects of an individual - finding a home, a job, getting medical care, etc - can be influenced through the power of information. Undesirable individuals can be harmed or effectively excluded from society without them even suspecting it. But undesirable is such an abstract word... in the past this meant women, homosexuals, jews, union leaders, religious leaders, journalists and so on.
Even without tieing queries to users, DNS logs combined with Google Play activity and Chrome activity probably gives Google a lot of business intelligence about other companies.
>We don't correlate or combine information from our temporary or permanent logs with any personal information that you have provided Google for other services.
Seems pretty clear cut.
Maybe competitive analysis (like, to get rough real time numbers of people that use Bing, etc.)? Though that's super niche and there's probably way cheaper ways to get that data.
Maybe it's a Fiber or internet.org kind of play, where by improving infra and access, you expand your own already-saturated market.
Maybe this is the exact reason + some data mining bonus (Not important, but Google can still do it).
Also, if Google is an ISP, without hosting it's own DNS service (Have to rely on other ISP's service) is dangerous.
They get to know all your non-HTTP(S) traffic too, of course. Other protocols still exist! Where you make POP3/IMAP/SMTP connections, where you SSH to, that kind of thing.
It is a business that relies on collecting data, monetizing it, and using it to further reinforce its position.
However, I'm really not sure the whole recent debacle over "don't be evil" is really relevant to perceived ethical issues regarding Google. It's not like the motto became "actually, yes, be evil" - as far as I know, it became "do the right thing." And honestly, company cultures are all much more than just a motto.
I speak only for myself, but my feeling is that trust is very personal and if you don't trust Google, that's your right. All I'm discussing are things that I know, not trying to tell you who or what to trust.
For me, this makes them one of the most trustworthy companies when it comes to handling my data. If you know of any cases otherwise, I would love to hear about them.
"And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"
Last thing the employee reads in the document.
(I agree that for privacy DNS over https is good, but the resolver still sees your dns queries)
Dnscrypt-proxy spreads your queries across multiple servers and keeps them private.
If you can afford consider running dnscrypt server yourself. [2]
[1] https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt-proxy
[2] https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt-proxy/wiki/How-to-setup...
> This is unfortunately something we can’t do something about. Nameservers responsible for archive.is (ben.archive.is, anna.archive.is) are returning answers tailored to the IP address of the requestor.
Look at the incentive and core business of the two companies.
Cloudflare is not in the business of mining as much data about you as possible. They don't sell ads and don't make money trying to make you fit into a profile. They have zero incentive to keep an history of all your DNS requests.
Google on the other hand, claim they don't do it but it will make complete sense for their business to do it.
0. https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1024018061311897600
In [1]: (8<<24) | (8<<16) | (8<<8)| 8
Out[1]: 134744072
Incidentally there are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who try to write too clever headlines.
>>> dt = pendulum.datetime(2018, 8, 12, 0, 30) # from the article
>>> born = dt.subtract(years=8, months=8, days=8, hours=8)
>>> born.add(seconds=int(ipaddress.ip_address('8.8.8.8')))
<Pendulum [2014-03-12T05:24:32+00:00]>Australia is a puzzle though.
No. It works well.
> is it blocked by ISPs
No.
> or are those people just overly obsessed with privacy?
No.
I don't know why it's low in usage, bit I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be low. I don't know anyone who would even think to change their DNS servers.