There’s a chance that you’re endorsing a product or two online without your knowing. If you’ve been using Google products and services for a while now, you’ll probably become subject to the search giant’s Shared Endorsements, which puts your profile name and pic next to ads and recommendations.
To be fair, Facebook has been doing a similar promotional scheme for a while now, feeding you with new pages, games, apps, and celebrities to like and follow because your friends have already done so. With Shared Endorsements, Google tracks your +1’s, reviews of places in Google Maps, your follows and shares, etc. It may then use them as your supposed recommendations for your friends to see when ads are displayed to them. Shared Endorsements is expected to launch on November 11.
If you find such act to be horrendously vile in nature, you can opt to turn off Shared Endorsements. Simply go to the settings page of your Google Plus account. Click the Edit button next to Shared Endorsements. Scroll down in the next page and uncheck the box. Hit Save. If a confirmation dialog box appears, just click Continue.
By default, all Google users who are under 18 can see shared endorsements from others but won’t be endorsers themselves.