Photo by Chris Welch / The Vergeīut when you actually look at the data, this information is very difficult to view and understand. Google has admitted that it tracks you even if you turn off Location History. It should be a means of holding companies like Google to account.

Consumer groups across seven European countries have lodged complaints with their data security watchdogs about it, and downloading your data using GDPR should be a way of checking that a service isn’t using tricks like these to gather any more data than it should be. The company has been repeatedly criticized for tracking Android users, even when they’ve turned off the main location-tracking option in the operating system. Google’s location-tracking data was particularly hard to understand. Some files were ambiguously labeled, while others were stored in formats that tested the limits of what constitutes “commonly used.” Actually working out what data I was looking at wasn’t nearly as simple as it should be. When it actually came time to look at the data I’d received, however, things got messy. Google’s location-tracking data was particularly hard to understand Once I requested it, it took the full 30 days to receive a link to download my data (the limit imposed by the regulation). Meanwhile, rather than presenting it as an easy option to find on its site, getting a single link with all of your Amazon data relies on you digging through the site’s “Contact Us” page to find the option hidden at the end of the list.

Google, Facebook, and Apple’s data download services let you pick and choose what data you want to download, they’re easy to find on their respective websites, and the data arrives quickly. It was easy to download my data in the first place. The information must be provided to the individual in a “concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language” in a “commonly used electronic format.” It sounds simple enough, but how did each of the four tech giants do? According to the UK data protection regulator, the ICO, companies must provide all personal data - defined as any data that relates to an identified or identifiable individual - on request.

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