Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Eliminating your Google History

I did this over a year ago, but for those who haven't and don't really want everything tracked...


On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.

Here's how you can do that:

1. Sign into your Google account.

2. Go to https://www.google.com/history

3. Click "remove all Web History."

4. Click "ok."

Note that removing your Web History also pauses it. Web History will remain off until you enable it again.

If you have several Google accounts, you will need to do this for each of them.

2 comments:

Emily J. said...

Thanks. I went to do it and discovered that I've managed to do it already without remembering that I did. It must have happened with I went to explore the new (non)privacy policy. Rather ticked me off and I turned off all kinds of things!

Bruce Kahn said...

Thanks, Steve! You da' Google buster!