Had a weird experience today. I had to call Medicare to check on the progress of something that really should’ve been done by now (I learned that apparently “3–4 weeks” only applies if there were no public holidays during that time), and once we finally got to the point of confirming there were no issues with the form and I just had to wait a little longer, the guy started asking me if I knew about privacy issues with Google!!
Like, genuinely, he went, “You know, my friend told me that if you log into Gmail then Google gets the web address of every page you visit afterwards, do you know if that’s true?” and I found myself explaining that a) if you use Google Chrome, yes; b) if you get to web pages by searching for them in Google, then yes; and c) if you don’t block Google tracking cookies, then yes. So then he said he’d already deleted his Gmail and was going to stop using Google Search and did I recommend that he switch to Microsoft’s browser instead of Chrome…
tbh even after that I got more stories (he also suspected Google got too much insight into his life through his Android phone and had a relevant story from another friend). By the end of the call, I felt like I’d spent more time answering his questions than the other way around. I wish the Australian Government would pay me 😂
