If you’re feeling a bit bored on this dreary Friday, here’s an amusing way to momentarily distract yourself: let Google guess your age and gender based on your previous searches. Apparently I’m guilty of searching like a dude, whatever that means, but it did manage to correctly guess my age range (25-34) and general interests (entertainment news, TV shows, visual art/design, and shopping). Kind of creepy.
But this isn’t all fun and guessing games. As Max Read at Gawker points out, the black magic at work here is directly related to the company’s “new thing where they ruthlessly violate your privacy,” aka its consolidation of 70 separate privacy policies into one giant policy that allows it to combine information gathered about you across various properties — and there’s no opting out! If you don’t like it, your only option is to close your account. It just got way creepier, right?
Comments (2)
They got my age about right but Google thinks I’m a man.
What utter bullshit. Guessing your age/gender/interests is how targeted advertising has worked since the dawn of the Internet; you’re demonizing Google for being the only one that adds some transparency into the process (and allows you to turn it off).
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