Technology

Google is using Gmail to track list of your purchases

Written by Faisal Saeed ·  1 min read >

Google is using Gmail to track a list of things you buy, whether online or from a store. If you have given your Gmail account after purchasing something to receive confirmation emails on your account, there is a great chance that the search giant has stored the list of your purchase.

There is a page on Gmail, under the name “Purchases” from where you can see the list of your transactions from at least five years back, as reported by CNBC. Google has said that only the user himself can see his or her purchases and that Google protects the privacy and security of its users. With these details, Google has information regarding your buying behavior.

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A Google spokesperson said, “To help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings, and subscriptions in one place, we’ve created a private destination that can only be seen by you. You can delete this information at any time. We don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes the email receipts and confirmations shown on the Purchase page”.

Google has further elaborated that the users can even turn-off the tracking completely from their accounts, for that you have to visit another page for search setting preferences. However, according to CNBC, when they tried to turn off the tracking it didn’t work for them. The platform has no such option to allow users to fully turn off the tracking.

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Google, on the other hand, promises that it does not sell or share user’s personal data including Gmail and Google Account information to anyone, not even with advertisers unless you have asked us to.

But the weird thing is, Google is still pulling users data and saving it in the purchases tab, which most people have no idea exists.