To delete your Location History manually: Go to “Location History” > Manage Activity > Click the trash icon to delete all your location history, or use the tool in the top left to pick a specific time frame to delete. To delete your Web & App Activity manually: Go to “Web & App Activity” > Manage Activity > Click the icon with three dots in the search bar > Delete activity by > Choose a time period to delete, or select All time. To delete your Location History automatically: Go to “Manage your data & personalization” > Location History > Auto-delete. To delete your Web & App Activity automatically: Go to “Manage your data & personalization” > Web & App Activity > Auto-delete. But it’s better not to have personal information-like everything you’ve ever Googled-sitting on a corporate server.Īfter an update, this auto-delete feature is turned on by default when you create a new Google account.Įxisting users need to turn it on manually. Google has already extracted most if not all of the advertising value from the data by that point, so this isn’t an ironclad way to protect your privacy from the tech giant.
You can also opt to just erase the data manually. If you want to leave the setting on, Google has a newer feature that will automatically delete some of the data the company collects after three or 18 months, depending on which option you pick. Then do the same for Web & App Activity (described above).Īs described above, toggling the Web & App Activity setting makes for a significant privacy boost, but it will disable some functions on certain Google products. To turn it off: Go to “Manage your data & personalization” > If Location History is on, click on it > On the next screen, click the toggle, and hit Pause. Here are the directions to switch off both settings. Yes, that’s the same master privacy control described above. The company then changed the language describing Location History, and told users they really could stop location tracking-but they had to turn off Web & App Activity as well. Internal email uncovered in a subsequent court case revealed that even Google’s own employees worried this was inappropriate. When you turn off Location History for your Google Account, it’s off for all devices associated with that Google Account.”īut in August 2018, Google users learned that the company continued to collect location data regardless of how they adjusted that setting. The description once read: “With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored. Google has a setting called Location History. To turn it off: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage your Google Account > Manage your data & personalization > If Web & App Activity is on, click on it > On the next screen, click "Turn off." If you’d rather leave the global Web & App activity setting on, you can also adjust the settings for Chrome and voice data. You can tell it to exclude browsing data and other information from Google Chrome, and exclude any voice data the company collects if you use Google Assistant. Google has introduced a few new controls for Web & App activity.
“It’s bad practice for them to lump all these settings together and disincentivize protecting your privacy.”īut Brookman thinks the privacy boost is still worth the trade-off, and you can always switch the setting back on if you need to. “That makes for a terrible user experience,” says Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy for Consumer Reports. But if you switch it off, Google warns that its services may be less “personalized,” and certain features will be disabled in Maps and Google Assistant.
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