Securing privacy on Google made easy

A new tool called My Activity makes it easier to see what information Google is stockpiling about you, and to delete searches you’d rather want it to forget. Here is an easy way to manage your privacy:

My Activity: You can find it by going to https://myactivity.google.com. (Note: You’ll probably be prompted to re-enter your password as a security measure.) 

Once you’ve made it in, there should be a big chronological list of things you’ve done using Google’s services — the searches you’ve made, videos you’ve watched on YouTube, and so on.

You can even search through the data trove to look up a specific record or activity Google has saved.

Find the info you want to delete: After spotting information you want to delete, which is made easy with the search bar at the top of the page. Once you’ve found the bit in the timeline, you can open a little menu by clicking on the three vertical dots on the right end of the record. Select the delete option on that menu, and Google will delete it.

You can also delete things in bulk by clicking on the three dot menu at the top of the timeline, choose “Delete activity by” and selecting a date range to erase on the next page. If you want an entirely blank slate, opt for the “All Time” option.

Stop Google tracking private info: You can “pause” Google’s data collection whenever you want. To lock things down, head to https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols. From there, you can tell Google to stop saving information about things such as your searches, location history, and YouTube-watching list.

“Privacy Checkup,” which can be found at https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/, uses a simple interface to not only help you manage what data is being saved by Google, but also things like what information about you may be public through services like Google+.

Also, the search giant makes the vast majority of its money from distributing targeting ads, which is made easier by the trove of data that they have about users’ online activities. 

But that means that limiting the data they save will probably result in you seeing ads that are less relevant to your interests. 

And beyond ads, Google uses the information to help personalize their products to users’ preferences, which can mean a more convenient online experience. 

For instance, Google has said that letting it save your search history can mean that it returns results quicker and letting it hold on to location history can help it suggest better commute options in its Maps product.