PRIVACY: Google Has My Dead Grandpa’s Data And He Never Used The Internet.

Over the past couple months I’ve been held up on a regular basis by the fact that Google has been overriding my LastPass credential window with their own despite the fact that I’ve never given Google access to any of my sign in credentials. This has been happening to me more often than I’d like, and it has really started to bug me. Why? A couple reasons. For one, I don’t want Google perpetually scanning my form fields grabbing stuff I didn’t ask them to just because that’s their default status. And two, Google is prioritizing their credential services over others I had previously chosen. This is simply a small demonstration of Google’s monopoly power that I would prefer it not be in my life. So last week I decided it would be the last time.

My first step was to hit that little “Manage…” button Google has deprioritized at the bottom of their credential window to see where it took me. What I found out is that Google, as expected, has been keeping track of me very well. Upon arrival to the controls page, I found a list of “Saved Passwords” (duh) as well as a list of “Never Saved” passwords.

Hmm. Never Saved? At no point did I tell Google to create and store a list of websites I had logged into that they didn’t get access to but would like access to at some point in the future. Maybe in the Terms of Service/Privacy Policy I agreed to this, but who knows? Not the majority of us, and it’s just creepy.

All that, and you’ll still have to read further to get to the part where Google had a dossier on his non-internet using grandfather.