As a technology user, I generate mountains of data every day (often without realizing it). In this post, I will catalog all of the data that I manually generated, as well as the portion of automatically-generated data that I am aware of.
| Time | My Action | Data Collected |
|---|---|---|
| Throughout Day (every few minutes) | Having Google App on iPhone | GPS location |
| Throughout Day | Having Apple Health App on iPhone, using iPhone as alarm | Number of steps, distance walked, number of stairs climbed, time asleep (viewable in health app) |
| Throughout Day | Sending/Viewing Messages and Emails (usually from iPhone) | Email contents, timestamps, location where I sent it from, read receipts |
| Throughout Day | Google Searches, Web Use | Search/Browsing History, Clicks (primarily Google/Facebook for Ad targeting) |
| 9:30am, 10:00am | Told Alexa (Voice Assistant) to turn on/off the lights and play/stop Phoenix Radio on Pandora | Voice print info and requests (Amazon), station played and specific songs played (Pandora) |
| 11:55am-12:20pm | Took an UberPOOL | Timestamped route, price, and passenger rating (Uber), money spent (Visa/Bank of America) |
| 12:20pm-12:40pm | Lunch at Manoa Poke Shop | Order info, card info |
| 12:40pm-2:59pm | Working in Google Docs and accounting in Wave | All edits (Google Docs), data export request (Bank of America), imported data (Wave Accounting), all annotations (Wave), usage logs (Apple Laptop) |
| 2:59pm-3:18pm | Ordered UberX | Timestamped route, price, and passenger rating (Uber), money spent (Visa/Bank of America) |
| 3:18pm-4:39pm | Got Coffee with a Friend in Boston | Security footage in shop, Payment |
| 4:40pm-5:05pm | Took MBTA Green Line from Park Street Station | CharlieCard Used at station (MBTA) |
| Night | Working on Computer | More tracking from Google (Docs, Chrome, Search, Inbox), Pandora music listening, taking handwritten notes on Samsung tablet (automatically uploaded to Dropbox) |
Now all this data begs the question: How is it used?