Google Knows How Many Kids Your Neighbors Have

Klein, Lisa

Fri, 12/2/2023 9:32 AM EST

A Google search for nearby businesses—like a restaurant or a hardware store—now includes people living in the surrounding area. It also include personal information like age, income, square footage of their house, the number of kids living at the address, and gender.

To this point, Google has made this personal information less accessible to some individuals, including people with undisclosed addresses and people who have opted out of being included in Google search results. But experts on privacy say those measures aren't universal and are hard to track. And the personal data could be used in ways that people don't expect, like to target them with political ads or determine their personal risk scores.

Google said the information comes from public records and websites, implying that the company has chosen not to take the material down even though it might be wrong or in violation of the law.