TikTok user @yorgoandlea shows in a video the steps to follow to learn what the network has taught us about our lives.
In the video, she shows how entering Google search by writing ‘ad settings google’ is registered with her data, and then goes to a list where it can be seen that the network has registered your age, gender and the languages you can speak.
In the information it was seen that the woman was also interested in ‘architecture’ and ‘radio equipment’.
The video has been viewed tens of thousands of times and has been flooded with comments from people expressing surprise at how much data Google knew about them.
One person wrote: “Oh my God. I tried it too – so much information!”
Someone else commented: “And it was completely accurate.”
A third wrote: “That’s why I always remove these options.”
But there were others who checked for themselves and found that the information was incorrect.
One person said: “This says I’m 44+ when I’m only 19.”
Another ironically supported it: “Apparently I’m 65 years old and I’m interested in Utah and reality TV.”
As you may know, web search engines record information about all users, such as videos you watch, location, attached documents or advertisements known as ‘cookies’ and pretty much everything you click.
Google says that it does all this ‘so that the services are as good as possible for you’.
It explains that in this way services and advertisements are more specific for certain people (such as Search or YouTube), from partnerships with other networks or advertisers.
Google promises that it never sells your data but only ‘targets ads when you’re online’ – but without giving your information to advertising companies.
If you don’t like this, then everyone can choose to turn off the ‘ad personalisation’ option on the Google network – which you can find on the same ad settings page where your information is personal.