Whether you’re sharing or sending sensitive information online or not, it’s still creepy when your browser is tracking your online activities, even if it’s for ad purposes. If you’re using Chrome, here are some of the settings you must be on the lookout for so Google doesn’t keep tabs on your online movements.
One of the main ones is the Location History. This feature should be disabled by default, but it wouldn’t hurt to double-check if it’s indeed turned off. You can do so by going here.
Besides location history, it’s also important to check your Google activity, which you can check by going to your Google’s My Activity section.
Once in, you can see three main settings on the top: Web & App Activity, Location History, and YouTube History.
You can open each three of them to learn more about what they track. If you decide to turn them off completely, simply tick the “Turn off” button.
Related
- DuckDuckGo launches App Tracking Protection for Android
- Google intentionally made smartphone privacy settings hard to find, documents suggest
But since you’re here, you might want to actually check the activities you’ve made on your Google account. As you can see, under the Web & App Activity section, there’s a full list of Google apps you can check and delete respective activities with. There’s Chrome, as well as Google Play Store, Maps, Translate, and more.
The YouTube History on the My Activity section shows all the videos you’ve watched, liked, searched for, and more.
Bottom line is, you can look at the Google My Activity controls in two ways: creepy and violates your privacy or, quite a handy tool if you want to look back on your activities. Either way, it appears that Google is giving users options to act upon them.