Although this article is not intended to show how large companies (Google Bing, Microsoft, Apple...) analyze our sexual behaviors in privacy, if you seek to draw attention to the fact that they have the possibility to do so; with the only objective of opening debate and reflection on the matter.
Google’s business builds on personal data to better target your ads
Google was born as a browser on September 27, 1998.The idea was simple: the user typed in the search bar a word, concept, phrase, click on "search" and the web you it returned similar results.Tosco at first, peroutil, became the reference browser in the West.
However, costs had to be covered.To that end, Google launched in 2000 AdWords, the possibility that advertisers embed their businesses, products and services in user searches.The first three results of any Google search are paid by advertisers:
When you navigate logged in (with the session open), Google uses cookies to register your search patterns and browser usage.When you reach an important critical mass of users, you could jump to next business: direct ads to specific people or groups of people.
For example, if most 50-year-old men do searches related to cardiovascular health, Google targets ads related to services and products, and directs them to men over 50, leaving aside the rest of people.It increases your performance.
After that, I started to spin more finely.If I am a 50-year-old male who is looking for cardiovascular health and Australian tennis, and a good part of the rest of the 50-year-old men are looking for cardiovascular health, Australian tennis and outreach books; Google will send me advertising book ads because I’m more likely to want to read them more than another user.
That is, Google's business right now is to know , to have data about people and to better understand their tastes, hobbies and hobbies.With the healthy and legal objective of selling more, not very different from the storekeeper who knows how to ask so that you end up buying some other product, but using Big Data technology.
Google knows where you are, when you exercise and when you sleep
The more Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., know about you, the better they can direct the ads that interest their users and, therefore, get better sales that increase the cost of the advertiser space.This is how these companies make profits For that, they need to collect as much data as possible .
Collecting data through GPS
The GPS of our mobile phones , the same one that tricks us and "manipulates" so that we get to the places we want to reach before, knows almost where we are., like the browser, those that we use to train and even some games like Pokemon Go, make use of GPS, so some users always have it connected.If you are one of those users and you enter the link below, maybe you will take a surprise:
https://www.google.es/maps/timeline
Sometimes, it is not even necessary to keep the phone on so that Google knows where we are.There are other ways to locate us, such as buying that information from telecommunications companies (which obviously need to know where we are to be able to send us the data, calls or SMS to our location).You can also reach us thanks to the public WiFi IP that we are using, or by the tags of the photographs that we upload to the different social networks.The possibility is there.
Collecting data through applications
The different training applications , such as Endomondo, Runtastic or Nike + Running, record our physical activity in steps and, using GPS, are able to trace our route on a map.add on our quality of life, hobbies and physical exercise, which is completed a lot thanks to the activity bracelets .
Activity wristbands, as well as smartwatches , especially those that collect cardiac activity, are great data collectors about our behavior.Even if we combine them with apps like Google Fit.Let's analyze this last.
Google Fit: when you give data about your behavior to Google
Google Fit is a simple but very interesting application.It works in a similar way to Endomondo in terms of daily or weekly challenges, and has a web viewer in which to view our metrics.It does not require more than a smartphone .Basically it is a place where the user can see how much time he has done an activity, how many steps he has taken over a period of time and how many calories he has lost.
That means Google knows it , along with our weight, age, minute-by-minute route, heart rate...You also know our schedules, as well as the people we train with, and when, if they have similar apps, and we don't even have to say what activity we are doing, the application detects it alone.
Fit works in the background, so will always be counting steps , always asking where you are, always aware of whether you are riding a bike, walking or you are in the gym.It may not seem like a big deal , but Google knows that sports tire us more, which less, in which you stop in the middle of the exercise to breathe, drink water and rest.They know that days we run furious and which we fool without really getting tired.
Google can know a good part of your sexual encounters
Once every X days, these two people make different routes that end at a home address.Google can know these routes, as well as their times, and which of the two arrives before at home.You can also know what it is a home , and not a gym, a public center or a park.In addition, you can compare the historical and guess which of the two lives there and that another comes occasionally, if that is the case.Also, as a curiosity , you can know who is not at home when this second person tends to appear.
Imagine that at any given time, and without changing the GPS position beyond a few meters, both activity wristbands detect abnormal peaks of altered heart rates .The pulsations increase as the different accelerometers detect more movement than usual , more "steps", which curiously do not correspond to any displacement.Both bracelets are still inside the home.
At the same time, both bracelets detect a drop in heart rate and these false "steps".The activity stops.Yes, it could be some kind of physical training such as weightlifting, but the patterns of series and increase Gradual heart rate, as well as breaks, are not contemplated.The data indicates otherwise: The data indicates that they have had sexual intercourse .
and also when you're alone
Masturbation is still a social tabu in many cultures and yet users can be happily giving up our behavior through different gadgets when we masturbate, just as we do when we have sex with other people.
For example, it is curious as the search for the word "porn" and the word "sex" (something more attenuated in the graph) they have a daily pattern so solid.It is low during the morning, and it rises a little at the time of the nap, but the peak we have it as the night comes in.From 23 : 00 at 2:30 does not stop rising, and then fluctuates until 6:30 to end up falling a couple of hours later.Our sexual patterns are incredibly predictable in the very long term:
If the searches of these and other contents are accompanied by constant movements of the pedometers of the activity and null movement wristbands in the GPS of the phone, it is quite easy to deduce what the user is doing .This does not mean that these types of patterns are studied, but it is possible to do so, because there is plenty of data and we are giving away.
As different technology companies give us access to better services that make our day-to-day easier, they also charge us in privacy .Your business is to sell data to different advertisers, and the price we pay to make use of different benefits is the delivery of that data.
Privacy is a concept that is much discussed today, and we are the users who have to decide if we are satisfied with delivering part of it to have access to higher quality services, or, on the contrary, we value it enough as to look for alternatives.
Images | iStock/fizkes, iStock/venimo, iStock/MichaelLanghoff, iStock/OcusFocus
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