The General Data Protection Regulation is set to go live on May 25, 2018 and in order to be compliant with the new law, Google has revised its entire Privacy Policy. To be very clear, there are no changes to the information Google collects or how it collects and uses said information, only that the new Privacy Policy page is now devoid of any “legalese” so that users know in clear terms what Google is doing. Additionally, there are now more controls available to the user to aid in the review of Google security, privacy and settings.
It would be a very good idea to go through the new Privacy Policy to understand the full depth of how much information Google is collecting from everyone who uses their services. One part of the policy reads “If you use our services to make and receive calls or send and receive messages, we may collect telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, receiving-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls and messages, duration of calls, routing information, and types of calls.” There is a lot of information in there that might alarm you, but Google consistently has reassured the world that it handles user data with the utmost care.
Google explains that all the user data it uses for ad-targeting contains no personally identifiable information. Additionally, the company also explains that whatever it collects, much of the information is anonymised. Google also explains how it anonymizes the data so that you have full clarity on the fact that your personally identifiable information is not being shared with third parties. Google does clarify the instances in which it will share private information with third-parties in its Privacy Policy.