Demographic data can be inferred from usage data. And if you're in a demographic that is currently being persecuted by certain lawmakers, that is a dangerous situation.

There was a time when Target outed a young woman as pregnant to her dad because of her shopping habits, Google would be able to know that just as much or more. For a current events example, someone searching for abortion access in a restricted state could be at risk of that data being used against them.

For a more direct situation, predatory advertisements would be able to pick out vulnerable people from the tracked data, and exclusively target them, like a payday loan agency only targeting those already deep in debt.

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I think the more interesting question is how this data has actually been used to harm you, if it has.

For decades now there have been endless warnings of an emerging "surveillance state" just a step away from 1984, but... where is the harm being done? Where are the disappearances, the discrimination based on it, the equivalent of the social credit scores?

It just seems to be used for law enforcement and advertising we can all block for free.

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Not any more you can't. Only network based ad blockers work on Google now, and using a VPN is looking to be illegal.

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