ATLANTA — Postcards from Google are showing up in mailboxes across the country, offering the chance to earn hundreds in reward points if you take part in a study.
But as Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray learned, it includes your passwords, social security number and much more.
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The mailing says Device Usage Study. Use your smartphone devices as you “normally would.” You can earn up to “$540 a year” — not in cash, but in reward points — for gift cards.
If you sign up for the study, you agree to share your web and app activity with the company. The company says it will use that data to make their platforms better.
“It did raise my red flags,” said Kalleigh Lane with All About Cookies.
Lane’s group is focused on online privacy that tests things, like ad blockers, to make sure they work.
“It’s incredibly invasive … but when I dug into the privacy policy, that’s when things started like going crazy,” she said.
According to the privacy policy, Google will track websites and apps you visit, how long you spend on them and what you search for.
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That includes videos, products to buy, and information you enter from your name and address to your credit card number and Social Security number.
Google says it will also track data about your calls, emails and texts, including the “content of messages as they appear on your screen.”
“That’s crazy… I want to reiterate that they see everything on your screen. You can’t just go to incognito mode and hide from it. It’s everything you’re seeing on your screen, and they are tracking,” Lane said.
The company will also be able to gather this information even if you use privacy settings.
Google says if you opt in, you can stop at any time, delete the data they collected and pause the tracking while you enter personal information.
The company also says they’ll use your data for marketing, but won’t sell it to anyone else.
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