Google tracks EVERY online purchase you’ve ever made by scanning your emails – how to find the secret list
It is not yet known how long Google has been keeping an eye on your shopping habits
GOOGLE knows almost every online shopping purchase you've ever made if it was connected to a Gmail account.
The tech giant can quietly track its users via any online shopping receipts in their emails and you can even view this list yourself via a private web tool.
According to a new report from CNBC, Google does not use this information to create personalised adverts.
However, Google only announced it would stop using Gmail account data to create personalised adverts in 2017.
Your shopping information can be deleted from the Purchases webpage but each item must be deleted individually.
You can access the Purchases webpage here if you have a Gmail account.
Google told The Verge in a statement: "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."
However, some users have been accusing Google of a lack of transparency as it hasn't revealed how long it has been tracking this information for and the Purchases list was not well publicised.
The existence of this tracking feature seems hypocritical to some when just last week Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in the New York Times that "privacy cannot be a luxury good."
The firm has recently been trying to improve transparency and make users aware of what data it is collecting, how it is doing this and how the data can be deleted.
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In other news, Google Maps is getting Incognito Mode for first time but users are warning that it will be a ‘tool for cheaters and scumbags’.
Google Maps is also hiding a "phantom" island that disappeared in 2012.
And, you can change this Google setting now to stop your location history being saved forever.
What do you think of Google tracking your shopping habits? Let us know in the comments...
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