Data analysed by Atlas VPN reveals that Google collects the most information about its users out of five selected tech giants – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Apple.
Barely anyone in this world has time and patience to analyse and read all the information regarding security and privacy. Sometimes Users are tracked and data is collected, at times even without a users’ consent.
“As a result, users end up allowing Google to harvest all the data they need by agreeing to the privacy policy terms.”
Google topping the charts shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the analysis claims that even Twitter and Facebook store more information than they need to, while Apple is the only company on the list that collects necessary information only.
The report also notes that Google collects thirty-nine data points for each user, including information like specific locations, which is a big concern.
Google generates revenue by showing ads to the ultimate customer- the more targeted ads based on your interest the more revenue is generated.
In recent years, Google has also changed the way of data collection, but the security is still lacking in the minds of users.
While much of the data Google collects will be used to help the company personalise and target advertising towards you, particularly data that’s linked to user IDs, there’s also some data that will be used by Google for making sure its apps continue to work as intended.
An alternative is not to use Google’s apps or services. While this can be beneficial for data collection and privacy, it does come with some trade-offs. Google’s vast resources mean it has developed some of the most feature-rich and well functioning services around – competitors can’t recreate exactly the same results as Google produces in search, for instance.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying out or making the move to more privacy-friendly alternatives. Arguably the easiest Google product to move away from is Chrome. There are a number of privacy browsers that limit the collection of user data and stop advertising tracking you across the web. Our Favourites Include Brave, DuckDuckGo, Tor and Firefox Focus.
Moving away from Gmail is harder as there aren’t as many well-developed competitors. Switzerland-based ProtonMail, which uses end-to-end encryption for messages, is the main Gmail alternative to consider.
