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Comment by dzader | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what your concern with Google building this 'shadow profile' is if you're not worried about this data being leaked to a malicious actor - Is Google simply having this data a bad thing, and if so, why?

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Is that really a question? Google creates global profiles of everyone for tracking and advertising.

Having a random developer create a shadow profile isn't the same.

The scale is vastly different and can be used to track you from site to site.

I know Google creates global profiles for tracking - and my question (which is the same as my original question) is why do you care? If that data is only used internally by google to serve you better ads why are you concerned with them having your data?

In short, because they’re doing so without my permission, and I resent that.

Even if a user trusts Google, because the data is digital and therefore permanent, there's no guarantee it will remain internal forever, whether that's because of a hack, a rogue employee, police/government pressure, or a change of ownership.

It seems to me that, with the exception of a rogue employee, all of those examples are at a greater risk of occurring with a small, independent provider. Google almost certainly has more security resources, more legal resources and political clout, and isn’t likely to be acquired any time soon.

I can’t say I love having Google track me, but I don’t feel any better about someone else doing it either.

If the marketplace was full of independent trackers (which I'm not suggesting is a good idea, because third party trackers are bad in the first place), then as they get compromised, only a small subset of data is lost... The chance of losing everything or enough data to pair to your real identity is a lot lower. It's like IDs in physical activity. If you visit your bank they track you by a different id to the library, your medical record, etc, each might be lost individually and be upsetting, but do they reveal data about all the others? No.

Why is Google security better than anyone else? Monopolies often have more resource, but lack motive, because they are a monopoly. Without transparency we have no idea how secure Google's systems are, but we do know Google has been hacked before.

Humans make systems. Teams like Project Zero (of Google) have contributed a ton to security. They prioritize security a lot.

It's not just bad from a privacy PoV. By giving away signals to GA, you're actually underselling your user's data. Google can correlate your analytics with other's to place highly targetted ads for your visitors on other sites, stealing the attention your high-quality content generates, such that sites with big pockets for Google ad bidding and placement but otherwise only low-effort content (and Google itself, of course) make all the money.

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