[UtahDave]

I'm not the most tin foil hat kind of person. I don't mind some of the tracking Google does as long as I know about it.

This url shocked me.

They apparently track every app I open and use on my Pixel phone. They had individual entries for when I skip a song in Google Music. I feel physically sick. I went through and deleted most of what I could and turned off tracking where I could.

[spidermango]

tell me why you feel physically sick that you now have a log of your own activity. which you could look through to find something you had done and forgot about. do you think someone at google is gonna sit there and sift through `your` very personal information and do...what?

[arctia]

You don't think Spotify or any other music app (or any app for that matter) does the same thing? How do you think Spotify or any app provide you with recommendations?

[throwaway287391]

I'm sorry, but ... are you (and others here with similar reactions) serious? You don't think Google knows when you skip a song in Google Music? How do you think recommendations work exactly? I thought this was HackerNews, not my grandpa's Facebook feed.

[CobrastanJorji]

I feel like you have this idea that technically literate people are magically immune from normal human foibles and think through the entire logical chain of consequences for every abstract fact of which they are aware. We are not.

Understanding how Google Music works and knowing that Google tracks information about you does not necessarily imply the very real understanding that viewing pages like this provide. People generally don't logic that way, us included.

[MajorBee]

I think it's a little more shocking when you see ALL this activity collated in one place by a single entity. It's not quite as impactful (and scary) if it had been Spotify or Apple Music with the music tracking, because that means our so-called digital profile is scattered across largely independent entities and so, no one entity has absolute information about us.

[turshija]

Ok, I just noticed something that is even scarier.

Under the "Chrome, Google Analytics, and more" I see "Used com.kongregate.mobile.adventurecommunist", which is a game installed on my iPhone. Ok, I also have my Gmail logged in there as well, so they somehow read shared data or whatever. But I also see "Used es.socialpoint.chefparadise" which is a game, installed on my iPad at home which is mostly used by my wife for random games and stuff and I don't have any Google account logged in there.

[IceWreck]

Did you log into that game to save progress?

[turshija]

I haven't logged into my Google account on iPad at all. Game progress on iOS apps is usually saved to your Apple ID (Game Center) account. My Apple ID is registered on my gmail account of course, but I'm not receiving any emails from this game that Google might extract ...

[javagram]

That game probably uses google analytics or something.

Most iOS apps use various embedded trackers, just like websites.