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Shocker: Google is tracking you this secret way
Big Tech makes big money by tracking what you do online. You may have heard of tracking pixels, cookies and scripts. I bet you didn’t know that fonts can track you, too.
Google gives away special fonts for website owners to use. At last count, they’re installed on over 60 million websites.
Google says its free tracking fonts help websites load quickly and look the same across your iPhone, Android, Windows PC, Mac and tablet. That’s true, but nothing’s free. It comes at the price of your privacy.
Secret exposed
When you visit a site that uses Google Fonts, you automatically hand over to Google:
- Your IP address, aka your unique online identifier tied to your devices.
- Every webpage you visited and how long you spent there.
- The links you click on that page.
This gets lumped in with all the other data Google collects on you everywhere else. If you want to be shocked, these three creepy lists show everything Google knows about you.
What can you do about it?
Right now, only Firefox allows you to set your own font choice. That’s why software developer Jeff Johnson created a browser extension that does it for you.
StopTheFonts block fonts from sources like Google with built-in tracking codes. Right now, the extension is only available on Safari.
If you use Chrome, Edge or any other browser, your best bet is telling Google to forget your search history and activity. It’s not a perfect solution, but it beats not doing anything. Luckily, that’s easy to do, and you can set it up to happen automatically.
- Go to myaccount.google.com and log in.
- Click Data & privacy on the left side of the screen.
- In the History settings section, checkmarks are next to Web & App Activity, Location History and YouTube History. Click each one to adjust your settings. Toggle them off to stop further tracking if you want.
- On these pages, set up Auto-delete for future activity. Select every three months.
Your search history will be gone, but there’s another step to take. You must also disable tracking through apps, location history and YouTube. Get the steps to do that here.
Tags: activities, Android, Apple iPhone, Apple Safari, Big Tech, browser extension, cookies, Firefox, fonts, Google, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, privacy, scripts, search history, tracking
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