How to stop Google knowing everything you do
Google is storing a detailed record of your day-to-day
browsing habits along with recordings of your voice.
The search engine keeps your browsing history, a map of
where you go with your signed-in devices, and brief audio recordings of your
voice if it thinks you were speaking to its digital assistant.
It also keeps your YouTube history and personalised ads.
But there is a way to delete all the little secrets it knows
about you, according to The Sun.
To view what Google knows about you sign into your Gmail or
Google account and type “history.google.com/history” in your web browser.
This will take you to a hub containing your digital
footprint.
Click on “Activity Controls” on the left-hand side of the
page and under “Web and App Activity” click “Manage Activity”.
A stream of web pages and map searches should show up in
chronological order.
- Melbourne woman, 74, loses $46,000 in iTunes scam
- Here’s why your iPhone has a tiny hole near the back camera
You can randomly delete them or make the entire footprint
disappear.
There’s also a section, which tells you what devices you’ve
used during your searches if you’ve used your Gmail account on multiple
computers or phones.
You can access a record of this using the “Sign-in &
security” tab and scrolling down to “Device activity & notifications”.
All that information is kept in “Recently Used Devices”.
To stop Google from storing future information go to
“Activity controls” and under “Web & App activity” switch the blue toggle
to off.
Google and
advertisements
You can also view how Google is targeting you with ads.
Scroll to the bottom of the My Activity page and you see a
link for Ads.
In Ads you’ll see a personality profile showing ad
preferences including topics Google thinks you find of interest based on search
history.
You can switch this off using another blue toggle.
Delete everything
To delete everything, go to click the three dots in the
right-hand corner of the “My Activity” screen and select “Delete Activity By”.
However, if you want to keep some information in your
browsing history for certain websites you want to re-visit you can also back-up
your digital footprint.
Under “Personal Info & Privacy” scroll down to “Control
Your Content” and then click “Download Your Data”.
