Warning! by proceeding you may subject yourself to bouts of “OH MY GOD” or “CRAP, THIS IS UNREAL”!

….go ahead, click here to see how much Google knows about you. This is not a hack or any kind of special trick, it’s a service that Google provides (out of the goodness of their own hearts?) to all it’s users (albeit it’s  buried in some obscure area of your profile). Does it not just raise your spirits to know how much one company knows about you, your personal life (including your friends, preferences, habits, etc, etc, etc)? I knew that they provide a ton of free services and that all of these services collect some amount of identifiable data but seeing all the data that they collect/have access to laid out this way….gives me the creeps.

This is one reason why I turned off Google Buzz today (an encourage you to do so as well…read this post for a reality check). I liked the idea behind Buzz, it’s the implementation that was a major FAIL. Hopefully they will fix it…soon.

You can opt out of Google’s interest based advertising here. Or better yet, use the Network Advertising Initiative to opt-out of several ad networks at once.

Rock on.