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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Funny - I remember opting out of all of Google's data collection years ago. I went there fully expecting Google to have no activity recorded, as I have seen when this page (or its ilk) have popped up in the past.

Much to my surprise, it was well populated again, with my web browsing/searching, YouTube, and location histories all turned back on again. I don't use the Chrome browser (aside from compatibility testing), and I don't use Android. I'd be very curious to know how all of this was re-enabled without my involvement.

Very unfortunate, and another straw for the camel's back.

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You probably opted out of relevant ads. This is a different feature as it integrates with other products (eg. Google Now).

See the activity controls to opt out here.

https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols

That those are different controls says a lot about how Google feels about making it possible to opt out of all their tracking.

That said, since there were some controls disabled, and some enabled, I'm more inclined to believe that they were re-enabled, if not automatically, then via some dark pattern. It's also possible that they were just new tracking points, but one of them was my search history, which I recall explicitly disabling.

I think new controls are part of it, but they've also redesigned the account manager to brings all your settings (privacy and otherwise) under one roof. I noticed it when they started pushing the privacy check-up feature.

I think that not wanting personalised ads but wanting Google Now's feature is a pretty reasonable and self consistent position....

You should have realized that opting out of all of Google's data collection years ago probably implies that Google wouldn't provide you access to information that they collect about you.

If it was well populated now, they actually screwed up. The data for the period that you opted out should not have been visible to you.

Well, it's not just that there was data, it's that the opt-out sliders were re-enabled.

It's the opposite for me. I didn't remember turning anything off and the only data it had was some location data from times I was using GPS on my phone.

Apparently I turned all of their tracking off at some point and forgot about it.

I opted out of search and location history. It bothers me when I turned off everything else, they auto opt-in'd me to things which I presumably wouldn't want and I had to turn off and delete everything.

It gets put back on, by default, on every major update.. how convenient..

Citation?

Unfortunately I didn't click a picture upon my last update. It happened few weeks ago, maybe a month. Even google keyboard settings were reset. Also, I have two accounts on my Android and it opted back in on both of them. I needed to opt-out again on both accounts.

Right.. I'm getting downvoted because? Anyone? Just because it didn't happen to you folks?

Surely it was a mistake to comment without the support of evidences of any kind, but anyway, I just though I could share my experience.

Your original comment wasn't a personal anecdote it was a broad claim that you haven't substantiated. That's the comment that's being downvoted.

I've documented on my G+ profile how my YouTube account, deleted, would get re-created even within a few hours based on utterly unrelated other activity.

Google have been screwing this up for a long, long, long, long, long, long time.

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/ibshLn9Z...

Nicely done and thanks for sharing!

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