Google traces users online-purchases and saves them in Gmail services

Google saves information about users’ purchases with the use of Gmail where come payments confirmations for services and goods.

Problem noted one of Reddit forum users with the nickname md3372. He discovered that “Purchases” page in his account stored information about all buying he made. However, md3372 did not use Google Pay for payments.

“If I navigate to myaccount.google.com -> Payment and Subscriptions I can see my Google-related purchases (like Google One subscription) but also anything ever ordered together with prices and shipping date. All my Amazon history is there, even products purchased from more obscure webshops. I do not use Google Pay and I feel this is not correctly captured in GMail’s usage policy. Thoughts?”, — wrote md3372.

In Google claim that information about purchases is available to users only, and this data can be easily deleted. However, on practice it was not so easy. Company did not provide united option that allows deleting all data together. Instead, users will need to open every purchase and press Remove Purchase button, and then to delete initial letter where this information was stored.

In Google assured that company does not use Gmail for demonstration of advertisement, does not sale and share personal information (including data in Gmail and Google accounts) with advertising agencies, however, technical giant could not explain why he collects and preserves such information and why it is so difficult to delete it.

According to Google representatives, company assesses possibility of settings simplification for easier control over information.

Nevetheless, users seem not to trust Google.

“Google reads every single email that comes through its service. It has previously said it won’t use your emails to advertise to you anymore, but they didn’t say they would stop collecting data”, — wrote Reddit user gimtayida

Source: https://old.reddit.com