Google Catalogs Your Serial Numbers

I cycle through guns pretty regularly


Not too worried.

I had no idea. Thank you!

Interesting

and.....?

I typed the serial number of every handgun I own into the Google none of them came up

I like DuckDuckGo. I'm sure they are somehow feeding our info to other big tech but at least they are not as bad as the brain bug. Of course if you have a gmail account, your emails (and pics) are being read.

I will guess they are linking photographed numbers with the numbers as typed in a search. I do not think this is specific to firearms. But it does point up how much information is created for google when things are posted and searched for.

It all goes to the big building outside Logan, UT anyway.

cokehayes45 said:

Reminder that google catalogs your serial numbers ...

Click to expand...

Well, that's ... disturbing.

Never sell a gun and all that.

recently my mother in law got a smart phone... She didn't know how to turn off the 'features'... not that they can actually be turned off completely, and was given text adds by people she "knew". Not people in the phone directory, but names she used regularly. These were all payed adds about voting. I'm sure you know who, but in addition, lots of stuff about our local elections. Statements taken from conversations the phone heard and texted back.
This is all a Google application that comes on these phones.
FYI, if you read the newer license agreements on Microsoft products, and presumably all others, they want unlimited access to your microphone, webcam, and keylogging. Same with your phone, even many TV's.... and they said Conway was crazy for making a joke about your microwave listening in!

In the end my MIL did not believe me, and thought I was a tinfoil hat weirdo when I talked about the Google tracking and ad algorithm. I'm sure most people just don't notice.

The scariest thing I have encountered was creating accounts using Google Chrome (not logged into a Google account, only using the browser) on one computer, and having those passwords and usernames saved already on a different computer, on a different connection under a different name, at a different location. They have no way of knowing for certain its me, but the had enough reference points to give me this "feature".... how many times have they given this feature to the wrong person?
As they say, never put a serial number in a picture. Also, never put a license plate, address number is recommended.

cokehayes45 said:

and you're okay with google indexing your personal information?

Click to expand...

google, gun shop, batfe, joe biden, whats the difference?

cokehayes45 said:

Reminder that google catalogs your serial numbers

This can mean that if you post the same firearm with the serial number visible to multiple social media accounts, then people may be able to find your personal social media accounts just by typing in your serial number

To demonstrate, I went to Reddit, picked the first few images with a visible serial number and typed only the serial into google images:

Click to expand...

Well, IMHO, they are not 'cataloguing them' as in they are in a database they are matching the images which includes a process called OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This is regularly done on images to filter out profane and other 'bad' content.

Now, they certainly are capable of storing the results and definitly know that there is a gun in the image so they could do this however, the fact you can do this in an image search doesn't prove it.

If a normal google text search shows personal results (ie anything not in the image) then that would be another matter. It would show them making a realtionship to other information not gathered by that image.

This scenario is entirely different than what you may type into an email, text or application on your smart phone or computer.

Every time you 'enable permissions' on a smart phone app or 'enable cookies' on a web page then the company is able to (and usually does) upload all of your information to their servers and use it internally. CA, The EU and possibly other jurisdictions limit their ability to use it externally or market it it (to Google for ads for example).

Now, the gov't can do all of this and more and is really only limited by available resources and potentially lawsuits by NRA, SAF, GOA, etc.

Are Google's bots smart enough yet to discover the gun's owner?

If the owner of the gun in the first pic was ever finger-printed, maybe the Google bot is reading his finger-print off the pic.

cokehayes45 said:

and you're okay with google indexing your personal information?

Click to expand...

So they find a person named cokehayes45 in Arizona? Then what?

Anything that you put on the internet is on the internet.
It is beyond your control and may be used and misused by anyone at any time.
That's one of the reasons that I am unlikely to put images of my firearms or anything else that has identifiable characteristics on the internet.
You've been warned.
Welcome to the fish bowl.

WOW! just WOW. I might have to use something besides google. Too bad i will have to use google to google another search engine.

DuckDuckGo.com

theotherwaldo said:

Anything that you put on the internet is on the internet.
It is beyond your control and may be used and misused by anyone at any time.
That's one of the reasons that I am unlikely to put images of my firearms or anything else that has identifiable characteristics on the internet.
You've been warned.
Welcome to the fish bowl.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it kind of reminds of people getting upset over Facebook having a huge repository of info on all it's users. What they fail to realize is that all the info was put into the system by each individual user. If you don't want the details online, then don't put it out there for everyone to see.