How to stop Google knowing everything you do
Google is storing a detailed record of your day-to-day browsing habits along with recordings of your voice.
The search engine keeps your browsing history, a map of where you go with your signed-in devices, and brief audio recordings of your voice if it thinks you were speaking to its digital assistant.
It also keeps your YouTube history and personalised ads.
But there is a way to delete all the little secrets it knows about you, according to The Sun.
To view what Google knows about you sign into your Gmail or Google account and type “history.google.com/history” in your web browser.
This will take you to a hub containing your digital footprint.
Click on “Activity Controls” on the left-hand side of the page and under “Web and App Activity” click “Manage Activity”.
A stream of web pages and map searches should show up in chronological order.
Melbourne woman, 74, loses $46,000 in iTunes scam
[[Simple]](https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/35324557/apple-iphone-hack-to-backspace-on-calculator/|Simple) iPhone hack demo video goes viral|popup=true]
Here’s why your iPhone has a tiny hole near the back camera
You can randomly delete them or make the entire footprint disappear.
There’s also a section, which tells you what devices you’ve used during your searches if you’ve used your Gmail account on multiple computers or phones.
You can access a record of this using the “Sign-in & security” tab and scrolling down to “Device activity & notifications”.
All that information is kept in “Recently Used Devices”.
To stop Google from storing future information go to “Activity controls” and under “Web & App activity” switch the blue toggle to off.
Google and advertisements
You can also view how Google is targeting you with ads.
Scroll to the bottom of the My Activity page and you see a link for Ads.
In Ads you’ll see a personality profile showing ad preferences including topics Google thinks you find of interest based on search history.
You can switch this off using another blue toggle.
Delete everything
To delete everything, go to click the three dots in the right-hand corner of the “My Activity” screen and select “Delete Activity By”.
However, if you want to keep some information in your browsing history for certain websites you want to re-visit you can also back-up your digital footprint.
Under “Personal Info & Privacy” scroll down to “Control Your Content” and then click “Download Your Data”.
