You have a range of controls to manage your privacy across Google’s services. To find answers to many common questions about privacy and your data in Google’s products and services, select an option below or visit our Privacy Policy.
There are also specialised resources and tools if you are looking for help with account recovery, suspected hacked accounts, removal of information from a Google product or service or technical problems.
Get help with a Google product
Visit our Help Centre and support forums.
Google Account recovery and suspected compromised accounts
If you're having problems with a personal account:
- Learn how to recover your Google Account or Gmail.
- Follow these steps to recover your account.
- If you still can't recover your account, find the Product forum for the product that you're using and create a post with your question.
If you're using a Google product with a work or school account, find help for Google Workspace.
If you think that a crime has been committed
If you think that a crime has been committed, you may wish to contact law enforcement.
If you're getting someone else's email
Report content or information that you would like removed from a Google product or service
Learn how to remove potentially illegal or unauthorised content on Google.
Google provides specific streamlined processes to remove content that can contain users' personal information from Google services.
This page will help you get to the right place to report content that you would like removed from Google's services under applicable laws.
If your request relates to YouTube, learn more about YouTube’s privacy guidelines.Your account controls
Learn about downloading your data, or visit the Takeout tool to download your data from Google products and services.
You can also use our tools to access and review your data or delete your data.
When you’re signed in to a Google Account, you can always review and update info by visiting the Google services that you use. For example, Photos and Drive are both designed to help you manage specific types of content that you’ve saved with Google.
We also built a place for you to review and control info saved in your Google Account. These tools include:
- My Activity allows you to review and control data that’s created when you use Google services, like searches that you’ve done or your visits to Google Play.
- Google Dashboard allows you to manage info associated with specific products.
- Personal Info allows you to manage your contact info, such as your name, email and phone number.
- Data and personalisation settings page allows you to personalise your data, such as activity and timeline, things that you create and to select general preferences for the web.
- You can also learn about changing your Google Account picture, name and other info.
When you’re signed out, you can manage info associated with your browser or device, including:
- Signed-out search personalisation: Choose whether your search activity is used to offer you more relevant results and recommendations.
- YouTube settings: Pause and delete your YouTube Search History and your YouTube Watch History.
- Ad Settings: Manage your preferences about the ads that are shown to you on Google and on sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads.
Delete your activity
You can delete activity, including your Location History. You can also choose to have this info deleted automatically after a set period of time.
Learn more about how to see, control and delete the info in your Google Account.
Delete a product or service
Delete your Google Account
You can delete your Google Account at any time. If you change your mind or accidentally delete your account, you might be able to get it back. Learn how to recover your account.
Once your account is deleted, all your data and account content is removed from our systems after a certain amount of time. Our policy describes why we hold on to different types of data for different periods of time. Once you delete your Google Account, you’ll no longer be able to use the following:
- Services that require you to sign in, like Gmail, Drive and Calendar;
- Data associated with your account, including emails, photos and records of transactions;
- Subscriptions on YouTube;
- Content that you purchased on Google Play, like movies, games or music;
- Info that you've saved in Chrome;
- Your Gmail username. Once it’s deleted, you can't use it again later, and you can't create a new Google Account with the same username.
In addition to these tools, we also offer specific deletion controls in our products, like Photos.
Your privacy and security controls
You have controls to manage your privacy across our services. You can use Privacy Check-Up to review and adjust important privacy settings like those below. In addition to these tools, we also offer specific privacy settings in our products.
- Activity controls
- Decide what types of activity that you’d like saved in your account. For example, you can turn on Location History if you want traffic predictions for your daily commute, or you can save your YouTube Watch History to get better video suggestions.
- Ad Settings
- Manage your preferences about the ads shown to you on Google and on sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads. You can modify your interests, choose whether your personal info is used to make ads more relevant to you, and turn on or off certain advertising services.
- About you
- Control what others see about you across Google services.
To help you safely share your data, Google lets you give third-party sites and apps access to different parts of your account.
- Use Security Check-Up to help make sure that your account is safe and to strengthen your online security.
- Learn more about how to make your account more secure.
What info we collect and how we use it
We're committed to being clear about what info we collect and how we use it. You can find details of our commitments in our Privacy Policy. You'll also get explanations of the types of info that we collect, how it's collected, why we collect it, how it's used and when it's shared. You can also visit our Safety Centre to learn about Google’s privacy and security principles.
Where your data is stored
To make sure that our services are reliable, we maintain servers around the world. This means that your info may be processed on servers outside of the country where you live. Regardless of where your info is processed, Google applies the same level of protection to your data.
Enterprise customer requests and resources
If you use a consumer version of Gmail, Drive or other Google product, the Google Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply to you.
Google doesn’t offer a Data Processing Agreement for the consumer versions of Gmail or Drive. Google does not act as a data processor for the consumer version of these services. If you have specific privacy concerns, data protection obligations or compliance needs, consult with your legal counsel.
If your organisation uses Google Workspace, Google Workspace for Education or Google Cloud Platform services, the Data Processing Amendment/Data Processing and Security Terms and the model contract clauses (here for Google Workspace and Google Workspace for Education, and here for Google Cloud Platform) may apply to you. If your organisation purchases any of the aforementioned services from a reseller, these terms may equally apply to you. You can accept these terms in the Admin console by following the instructions here for Google Workspace and Google Workspace for Education, and here for Google Cloud Platform. In addition, the Google Cloud Privacy Notice describes how we collect and process personal information (excluding our customer’s data) in relation to those services.
Google doesn't provide hard copies of these terms. For more info about Google's compliance for business services, read Google Cloud's compliance FAQ, privacy.google.com, and google.privacy/businesses.
Google makes appropriate data processing terms available for certain products where it acts as a data processor, including those listed below.
- Analytics
- Google Ads, for Customer Match and shop sales direct
- Google Cloud Platform
- Google Workspace and Google Workspace for Education
- Google Tag Manager
- Firebase
You can also find info on how Google helps Google Ads advertisers comply with GDPR. For other features related to ads, view the Google controller terms.
You can find more info about the products and data processing terms at privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance.
Avoid and report scams
People sometimes use the Google brand to scam and defraud people. Learn more on how to avoid scams and where to report them.
If you find suspicious activity on your account, learn how to help secure your account. Use Google's Security Check-Up to check your account security settings.