Google Maintains a List of Everything You Ever Bought Using Gmail, Even if You Delete All Your Emails

'In May, I wrote up something weird I spotted on Google's account
management page. I noticed that Google uses Gmail to store a list of
everything you've purchased, if you used Gmail or your Gmail address
in any part of the transaction. If you have a confirmation for a
prescription you picked up at a pharmacy that went into your Gmail
account, Google logs it. If you have a receipt from Macy's, Google
keeps it. If you bought food for delivery and the receipt went to your
Gmail, Google stores that, too. You get the idea, and you can see your
own purchase history by going to Google's Purchases page.

Google says it does this so you can use Google Assistant to track
packages or reorder things, even if that's not an option for some
purchases that aren't mailed or wouldn't be reordered, like something
you bought at a store. At the time of my original story, Google said
users can delete everything by tapping into a purchase and removing
the Gmail. It seemed to work if you did this for each purchase, one by
one. This isn't easy -- for years worth of purchases, this would take
hours or even days of time. So, since Google doesn't let you
bulk-delete this purchases list, I decided to delete everything in my
Gmail inbox. That meant removing every last message I've sent or
received since I opened my Gmail account more than a decade ago.
Despite Google's assurances, it didn't work.'

-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/07/05/1728200

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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