How to find out what data Google collects about you and get rid of tracking

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Your personal information from Google services may suddenly become publicly available. Life hacker tells how to avoid this.

Why Google collects user data

Google is following us, and it's been no secret for a long time. Keeps track of both our location and all activities on the Internet. You may have noticed that as soon as you search the Web for information about a product or read an article about it, you will immediately be shown the corresponding advertisement on YouTube. If Google did not collect data about its users, ads would not be personalized and therefore simply would not work.

What is the danger of data collection

On the one hand, it seems that there is nothing wrong with all this. Well, Google collects data about us, so now, not to use the company's services? After all, thanks to this, your presence on the Internet becomes more interesting and useful: you are advised what is most likely to interest you.

But if you remember the recent incident with the indexing of Google Docs, doubts creep in: will someone other than Google be able to get data about where you live and what are your hobbies? There are no guarantees, so it's worth taking care of yourself on your own.

What Google knows about you

Location history

First and foremost is your geolocation. Using it, Google can track and record your location, and based on this data, it can offer you personalized ads. You can follow the link and make sure that Google remembers even the places that you may have already forgotten about.

In the upper left corner, you can select any date, and the map will show where you were, what time and even on what transport you moved.

History of searches and actions on the Internet

Google stores not only your search queries, but also a list of articles that you have read, the profiles of people on social networks whose pages you have visited. See for yourself by following this link.

Information from your devices

Data about your contacts, your calendar plans, alarms, the apps you use, your music preferences, and even your battery level are just another list of data Google collects about you to serve more relevant ads. A list of all data can be viewed here.

Voice prompts and smartphone voice control

If you are familiar with the phrase "Ok Google", congratulations: your voice commands to control your smartphone, as well as your voice search queries are saved on Google servers. You can listen to them by following this link. And if there is a data breach, it may not be just you.

Advertising information about you

For Google, the main goal of collecting user data is to personalize ads, because this is where the company makes money. You can find out what advertisers know about your interests and preferences, and finally get rid of annoying advertising for a product that you once, by a ridiculous accident, decided to find on the Internet.

Photos from your smartphone

If you are using an Android smartphone, perhaps your photos and videos are already stored in the Google cloud storage, and you don't even know about it, because auto upload may have been enabled by default. Don't rush to uninstall the Google Photo app - it won't fix the situation. All your photos will continue to fly to the cloud and in the event of a data leak may be publicly available. Google itself wrote instructions on how to disable auto-upload of photos and videos on different devices.

Your cookies

Have you noticed how much of your computer's resources is consumed by Google Chrome? The browser collects data about you and works in the background even after a complete shutdown, and also stores your cookies. How and for what Google uses these files - you can find out here.

If you do not want the tabs to continue working in the background, go to the Chrome browser settings and in the "System" item uncheck the box next to "Do not disable services running in the background when the browser is closed." This is only available for the Windows version, macOS users do not have such an item in Chrome. If you need to disable the collection of data about you and the use of cookies, at the bottom of the page, click on the "Advanced settings" button, go to "Content settings" and disable everything that you would not like to talk about yourself and your actions.

How to delete all data about yourself and prohibit their further collection

First, you should follow this link and turn off the collection of those data that you do not want to transfer to Google and advertisers. All items are collected in one place, which is very convenient.

Then you need to delete those data about you that were previously collected. To do this, click on the following link, specify the period (to delete all data at once, you can select the "All the time" item), select services one at a time or all Google services at once and feel free to click on the delete button.

You can change your name, date of birth and other personal information here.

Also, if you don't use Google Pay for contactless purchases and don't buy apps on Google Play, check to see if your billing information is stored on Google and can also be deleted.