Ask HN: What can Google do with me or to me if all I have with them is Gmail?

With all the different kinds of controversy that Google is choosing to get itself into lately, I've stopped using Google Chrome, deleted all of its saved data, and deleted data for a bunch of other Google products (YouTube, Google Pay, everything but Gmail). My web history, location history, and bunch of other things are set to "paused" (everything that Google allows to be paused is paused). I deleted third-party access to my Google account. My ad settings are set to not be personalized.

I use uBlock Origin, HTTPs Everywhere, EFF's Privacy Badger, and Canvas Blocker on Firefox, but I also have Firefox set to clear all my history, cookies, and other browsing data when I close it. I also use a router-based ad-blocking via Diversion (formerly AB-Solution) and pixelserv-tls as well as dnscrypt via dnscrypt-proxy.

Obviously, Gmail is the last holdout.

My question is: with just my Gmail account, what can Google know about me or do to me? My only concerns with leaving Gmail for something like FastMail or MailFence are the potential reliability issues (both in sending email reliably from my own domain and accessing it as often as I do now). It'd be nice to have both end-to-end encryption, and encryption, but given how powerful a $5 wrench is, it's probably wishful thinking.

(For completeness: I stopped having a Facebook account. I log into my LinkedIn account once a year. I log into my Twitter under five times a year. I don't have the mobile apps (first-party or third-party versions) with any of them. I don't have a tinfoil hat, but I have bought https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01I497JAM/ for someone before.)

19 points | by tareqak 2039 days ago

2 comments

  • ocdtrekkie 2039 days ago
    Well, along with knowledge of your Gmail account is the potential for knowledge of... every single other account you have connected to it. People rarely seem to realize their email account is often the most important and valuable property they have, as every other bit of digital content they have is tied to it, and often dependent on it to get access to it.

    You should ask yourself: Can you get into your Steam library or Amazon account if you can't get into your email? Do you have a workaround if Gmail deletes your account? (If you have your own domain you can redirect, you do. If you use @gmail, you don't.)

    It's exceedingly unlikely Google would do this, but bear in mind, the steward of your email account could reset the passwords and/or grant themselves access to any data you have on almost any digital account... and in many cases, hide the evidence they did so.

    With regards to reliability, FastMail does occasionally have very short outages for technical difficulties which you can see on their Twitter account, but as someone who lives out of their email account so much that I browse social media largely by mass subscribing email notifications to a folder, I've only once tried to get to my email and been briefly unable to in the time I've had FastMail (over two years, I believe).

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    • ocdtrekkie 2039 days ago
      Oh! Another cool one you should know about: If you're worried about Google knowing what you buy, Google actively scrapes your email for receipts for purchases you make, you can view it here: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases

      There is no way to opt out of this, the only way to remove this data from this form is to delete the email. While Google claims they no longer use your Gmail data for ad tailoring, they arguably could use the purchase history data they store about you... much of which comes from your Gmail data.

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      • adventured 2038 days ago
        Had no idea Google was doing that. Not surprising of course, but despicable. And of course they make it a chore to delete the records. Thanks for pointing it out.
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        • ocdtrekkie 2038 days ago
          It's more than a chore: If you're like me (or anyone who bought into the whole "archive all your mail instead of deleting it" thing that Gmail pioneered), the only solution to the purchases tab is to leave Gmail. If I want to keep my receipts in my email as a record, I have to keep my email somewhere else.
      • tareqak 2039 days ago
        Yeah, that's definitely the kind of data that credit card companies really, really want. Thanks for letting me know!
  • mikeloden 2038 days ago
    https://wiki.fuckoffgoogle.de/index.php?title=GoogleAndMassS...

    email metadata analysis https://labs.rs/en/metadata/