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Where is Google?
Soundbox
Posts: 6,250
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Today I transferred all my contacts from my old phone to the new HTC ONE via the internal menu and Bluetooth. Only when looking for the contacts in the new phone and not finding them I realised I sent (saved) the numbers to what showed on screen as Google.
I am now worried as some numbers are sensitive and private. Seeing that they have been saved to 'Google' is something that is really worring me. I need to delete them from the mystery location.
Has anyone got any idea where 'Google' is? Are all those numbers somewhere accessable to the public or are they secure?
Thanks for any help.
I am now worried as some numbers are sensitive and private. Seeing that they have been saved to 'Google' is something that is really worring me. I need to delete them from the mystery location.
Has anyone got any idea where 'Google' is? Are all those numbers somewhere accessable to the public or are they secure?
Thanks for any help.
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You can delete your Google account if you wish or not sync your contacts with Google. If you go to Google on your browser Google.com/contacts you can see what is stored there
You just need to log into your google account and all your contacts saved to your google account will show there in a list. You will be able to delete the ones you do not want on your google account.
Lol.
Thanks - even knew about that 'contacts' area. If only it were as basic as my mates - some numbers are for people who have given me their 'strictly private' personal number and I was not wanting to abuse their trust.
If even one invasion of privacy is found I will be selling the phone pronto. I use it for eMails mainly...see how it goes.
I have bad news...
Hard to do that with a filofax.
I'll put the first offer in of £200.....
You even have the option not to sync contacts. However I would wonder why someone would buy a smartphone and make it 'dumb'
Google Contacts is an integrated part of your Google Account, along with GMail and Calendar. If these people sent you their number in an email, it is far less private than the Google Contacts storage. Indeed, storing them on the phone itself is much less secure since anyone picking it up could get them.
Incidentally, if you're worried about your personal information then you should enable 2-Factor Authorisation on your Google account. There's really very little reason why anyone should choose not to.
Good advice there. As long as your account is secure there should be no problem.
I don't think that people at Google spend all day looking at private data belonging to their millions of users, although that's what some people would have you believe.
Microsoft's millions are spent educating us about Google, and The Guardian, always chasing US readership maybe, does the very same.
There is certainly a need for education but having the wolves as sheepdogs makes for 'mutton stew'.
I'm quite trusting Soundbox to throw more 'pebbles in the pond'.
if you're that concerned about privacy you might want to stick with a paper diary or filofax, and hope you don't lose it
Seriously though, storing your contacts online is safe enough, as long as your account is kept secure. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages for most people.
Of course if the security services, like the NSA, take an interest in you, then pretty much everything you do online can be scrutinised if they so desire....
A victory for privacy.
Google latitude is closing down in August.
:rolleyes:
Well it is sort of funny.
If you used a service that, for example, only synced contacts for ten thousand users, anyone who got a data dump (or, indeed the NSA leafing through it), your particular piece of data is much more likely to be exposed.
I'm betting that the numbers were emailed/texted or you've written them down. All way less secure than Google.
Er, did he know? :eek:
Something like Glympse might help:
http://www.glympse.com/get_glympse
A good idea to use them then as long term, it more avoids the chance of suffering device OS lock-in.
There is also Ubuntu One which sounds a good long term storage bet too.
In short, Google storage is a secure area for all the things you might want to access across multiple devices. It's the default cloud storage option for everything on the phone.
Dropbox is a third-party app which can perform similar functions but isn't standard on Android, which is why it duplicates some of the functions that Google provides.
That applies to google's free services. Your information is what they use to sell targeted ad-space and google make all of their money from understanding their users and selling ads to companies that want to put things in front of you.