Google is watching you. How can I prevent this and delete my data?

The fact that Google knows a lot about users has never been a big secret. But more disturbing information came to light last week. It became known that the company stores data about users’ locations, even if they didn’t give the go-ahead.

However, in most cases, Google does not hide exactly what data about users it stores. But he doesn’t advertise. The collected information is available for viewing, but is often stored in completely non-obvious places.

In this article, we will talk about where you can find the data that Google has collected about you, delete it and, if possible, turn off tracking.

History asked

Perhaps this is the most obvious fact for everyone. Google saves all your search history. You can view and clear this history on the page “My actions«. At the beginning, the search history for today is displayed. Below — for yesterday and further ad infinitum.

You can delete each request individually, or you can click “Select deletion option” in the left menu and specify the date or period for which you want to clear the search history. Well, or choose “All the time” and, accordingly, get rid of the entire history at once.

To disable history logging, in the left menu, select “Activity Tracking”, and on the page that opens, turn off the “Web and App History” option. This will disable the recording of not only search history, but also activities in the Chrome browser.

History of voice requests

Less obvious is that Google keeps all of your voice search history. If you’ve ever used the Google Assistant, whether on a smartphone, tablet, or inside a smart speaker, then Google has a sample of your voice. Most users do not even realize that they can listen to any of their lines.

You can find them in the section “My activities”> “Voice control«. You can delete entries in the same way as you can delete search history. And you can turn off the history of voice requests on the page “Activity Tracking«. It is enough to turn off the “Voice control history” option.

Movement history

In addition to the history of text searches and voice queries, Google captures the history of the user’s movements. You can view your history on the page «Chronology”.

If you don’t like this tracking, you can turn it off. here. To do this, turn off the “Location History” option.

Advertising settings

One of the most interesting places in your account is the “Advertising preference settings«. Here you can see something like your “psychological portrait”, which is automatically compiled based on your search queries, YouTube views and other activity on the Internet. You will be surprised how accurate such a portrait can be.

But we are primarily interested in the possibility of editing this portrait. If any of the interests in the list seems wrong to you, you can click on this option and turn it off. You can disable the display of advertisements from specific large advertisers, such as AliExpress.

Finally, you can turn off the “Ad personalization enabled” option entirely. Unfortunately, ads will not disappear from this. But ads will no longer be personalized because Google will no longer consider your interests when showing them.

Account deleting

Well, if you are tired of Google and you do not want to work with the products of this company at all, you can simply delete your account. To get started, take a look atPersonal Area«. It shows all the services that are accessed through a Google account. Please note that you will not be able to fully use these services after deleting your account.

In chapter «Saving data” you can upload all information about yourself to your computer hard drive in a single archive. Well, after — you can finally delete accountconfirming this radical decision by entering a password.