COLUMN: Watch what you search for
College students are using technology for anything.
Incoming freshmen spend an average of 17 hours a day with technology. All this time, whether it be a phone, tablet or computer, isn’t just between you and your device. Companies are always innovating in new ways to see what you’re doing, and when you’re doing it.
The most popular phones in the world are Android and iPhone. These operating systems have what are called intelligent digital assistants: Google Now for Android, and Siri for Apple.
These assistants are always using your location. In fact, for most functions both brands require that your location be turned on.
Location tracking is just one end of the spectrum. Your device tracks a bevy of information such as downloaded applications, web searches, videos watched, products purchased and more. The most useful of these to third parties is web searches.
Companies will pay big money to find out what is being purchased, as well as the time and location of said purchase. Google AdWords and Google’s other search tools are extremely well known in the advertising world.
Money from "search advertising" accounts for more than half of Google’s total revenue. With over 40,000 searches on Google every second, the company has accumulated a lot of information.
It is highly likely you have this setting turned off, unless you explicitly don’t want it to. If that is the case, you can go into your settings and change that. Google has baked in a setting called location history.
If you go to settings–location–Google location history, you can turn it off.
For those who have never heard of this, or never bothered to turn it off, Google has a nifty website in store for you. Just search “location history” in Google and it will be the first link. This website provides you with your most popular locations and even organizes your “trips” for you.
When I went to this website it showed a trip I took to Cedar Point all the way from summer 2013.
Turning off location tracking on the iPhone is just as easy. Under settings–privacy–location services–system services, you will find frequent locations. This is on by default to “provide useful location‐related information. A good example is Apple’s Explore section in the App Store.
So when you are searching on your phone or computer and you suddenly see an advertisement for a product you just searched on Amazon, it’s not just a coincidence. That is search and display networking at its finest.
