For almost six years, Google has extracted and stored all purchases, bookings, and subscriptions from your Gmail account. It’s not clear why Google wants this information, and there’s no easy way to delete it all.
How Google tracks your purchases
Initially stumbled across by a CNBC reporter, a “Google Purchases” page keeps track of all digital receipts sent to your Gmail from as far back as 2012.
The page is not limited to purchases made directly from Google, either. From flight tickets to Amazon purchases to food delivery services, if the receipt went to your Gmail, it’s on the list.
Google takes the name, date, and other specifics surrounding the purchase and records them in a list on the page.
The recorded details can get a little creepy, too. A reporter from Buzzfeed saw Google record specific food requests she added to one of her takeaways.
How to delete your Google Purchases
Unfortunately, the only way to remove a purchase from the list is to find and manually delete the email that contains the original receipt. Worse still, you can’t turn off tracking, and there’s no way to delete the list en masse. This process is incredibly tedious, especially given that these lists can go as far back as 2012.
Even more perplexing is that there’s no clear purpose for the collection of this data. A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the page is meant “to help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings, and subscriptions in one place” and that they “don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads.”
The logic behind this reasoning is strange, the info is hiding in Google’s Account page, and it’s not exactly easy to access for users who want to “view and keep track of purchases.” And seeing as this page isn’t really being promoted to its users, the hidden nature of this page further begs the question of why Google is really collecting this information.
Google says it cares about privacy—we’re skeptical
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, recently stated that privacy should not be a luxury good, but the company seems to be practicing a different definition of privacy. Google even has the cheek to write “only you can see your purchases” on the Purchases page. Right—only you and the company that combs through your emails to retrieve them.
Until Google decides to make it easier to delete your purchasing information or, even better, to render this function obsolete, consider using an email address with a secure email provider to send all your digital receipts to.
Comments
My guess is they sell the information to business who then target you on line with advertising linked to the kind of stuff you have purchased in the past. Google should be requried to obtain our consent before collating and selling subscriber information and pay us a percentage of the profits made from revealing our personal details to other companies.
Sometimes, I buy something, “just once,” over the internet. I normally use PayPal to finalize the purchase. But yes, all my purchase receipts come to my Gmail.
I don’t see tracking purchases you make, as being very important to ad improvements. Many times I buy something that has nothing to do with a Google ad.
But the one thing every purchase has in common, is the “payments.”
Weather you pay with a credit card or via PayPal, or some other form, every payment is “electronic.” And every electronic payment is connected to your bank accounts!
It is a primary objective of the NWO, to go “electronic currency.”
Electronic currency can be used in every nation, without having to use a monetary conversion… “Like from US Dollars, to French Franks.”
Electronic payments come straight from your bank account to whomever you are paying for a product or service. No matter what countries separate you from one another.
Tracking electronic payments, is tracking electronic currency…
the reason why is they can improve their ads. When you made a purchase, it doesn’t need to be advertised to you any more.