Here You Can Know How Well Google Knows You

A couple years ago, news of Google’s ad settings — the page that reveals your advertisement profile — exploded onto the internet. People were both horrified and amazed that the company was capable of assigning ages, genders, and interests based on simple search histories. Now, just two years later, that news doesn’t seem so crazy. Information about who you are has become common currency on the web, and it’s used regularly to target us with ads. Still, that shouldn’t stop us from questioning the origin of the targeted ads that we see when we’re casually browsing — especially when they seem a little off.

So, with this in mind, we decided to go back to the mysterious Google Ads settings page to see just how much Google had figured out about each of us over the course of our plugged-in lives.

But before we get into that, here’s how you can do this at home:

1. Sign into your personal Google account. A “work” Google account is fine too, but depending on what your job is like, your results may be a little off.

2. Visit the Google ads settings page.

3. Bask in the glory of your results!*