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Google Watches You Shower

I was a little disturbed to see ads for recipes appearing next to emails to my girlfriend while replying to one of her emails through G-Mail. The reason it disturbed me was that we had not discussed food or recipes at all in the email and the only relation to the types of recipes I was being shown is through my Google Bookmarks, where I have a category labelled by her name, containing a bunch of different recipe bookmarks. Is there currently an algorithm for finding links between my bookmarks and the types of ads I am shown in my G-Mail account? Surely the use of my personal information in this way is just a little out of order.

I'm so happy with G-Mail and the other Google apps that I don't really feel this is a big enough problem to stop using them, but it does certainly weaken my opinion of Google as an organisation, which was not particularly positive in the first place. It should serve as a warning to those who think they can trust Google to log their search history, bookmarks and emails and respect their privacy at the same time.

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Tags: Google, Privacy, Rant