Here’s how to get what Google knows about you

Here’s how to get what Google knows about you

Google accounts have become a great source of information about most people using the Internet today. Most people use one or more of Google’s services while Android phones are tied to Google accounts. A Google account stores information about you and your online behavior to be able to make the best recommendations for you in terms of shopping or search results. This information that Google stores can be accessed through your Google account. 

Data reveals that nearly 83 percent of mobile devices are running Android. Around 64 percent of all search requests are handled by Google, irrespective of platform or operating system. Google Chrome is now the web browser for one in three people and a billion people have Youtube accounts.

The information stored by Google about you is kept in different places and usually requires visiting multiple websites or applications to collect. Tools have been created to be able to extract this information with reduced effort and increased speed. One such tool is Elcomsoft Cloud eXplorer.

Elcomsoft Cloud eXplorer is a tool that allows you to find out what Google knows about you.You can see your calendar entries, your browser data, your contacts stored on your Android phones, your mobile phone manufacturer and carrier, the last time you were active on your phone or account, your search history, your location history, photographs of yours and information about your chats, notes and you. 

“It’s not about Android”, says Vladimir Katalov, ElcomSoft CEO. “Google collects and maintains massive amounts of information from registered customers using the many Google services from PCs and mobile devices. Normally, the information is scattered around the many services offered under the single sign-on roof of Google Account. Out tool pulls the data from all available sources, assembling available information in a single place. Just looking at the amount of data that is available is extremely impressive.”

While most of this information can be accessed by you without the need for the tool. The tool makes it a lot easier and is much faster. The location data available on the application shows that Google knows where you are accurate to the building you visited. In just a period of three months, Google had GPS coordinates for 30,000 of my locations with an accuracy of 50 meters. That’s a lot of detail.

Even with access to your account for a short time, a hacker using a tool like this could get an insane amount of information about you. While email and Whatsapp chat extraction are also possible, Elcomsoft’s tool does not backup these two things for you. Elcomsoft’s eXplorer for WhatsApp also currently only works with Apple’s cloud and physical backup or direct capture from iCloud.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 28 March 2016

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Librarian

Khaitan & Co

Upcoming Event | National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) during April 22-23, 2016.

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