Google Privacy Settings You Should Change Right Now

Have you been neglecting your diary? Rest easy. If you have a setting called Web & App Activity turned on, Google is keeping one for you.

You can see this data for yourself, and if you’ve never looked before, the level of detail is shocking. You’ll find granular details about your activity on Search, Chrome, Android, Google Assistant, and more, including details such as your location, websites you’ve gone to, and the apps you’ve used on your phone, along with exact timestamps for all this behavior.

Years ago, a description of Google’s Location History read: “With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. In August 2018, Google users learned the company continued to collect location data regardless of how they adjusted that setting. Internal emails uncovered in a subsequent court case revealed that even Google’s own employees worried this was inappropriate.

Since then, the company has renamed the setting “Timeline” and changed the description to explain that you can disable location tracking only if you also turn off Web & App Activity.

Yes, that’s the same master privacy control described above. Here are the directions to switch off both settings. (You can also delete the data already collected through Timeline, or leave the setting on but have the data deleted after a set period of time. Scroll down to “Set It and Forget It,” below.)

To turn it off: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage Your Google Account > Privacy & Personalization > Timeline (it may still be called Location History for some users > If the setting is on, click on it > Turn Off. Then do the same for Web & App Activity (described above).

As described above, toggling the Web & App Activity setting makes for a significant privacy boost, but it will disable some functions on certain Google products.

If you want to leave the setting on, Google has a feature that will automatically delete some of the data the company collects after a certain period of time. You can also opt to erase the data manually. Either way, there’s an important caveat.

By the time Google’s auto-delete kicks in, Google has already extracted most if not all of the advertising value from the data. You can get the company to delete the specific records of your searches for recipes or trips to the liquor store, but that doesn’t mean Google will forget that it has learned you’re a home chef and regular vodka drinker.

Nevertheless, it’s still better not to have personal information—like everything you’ve ever Googled—sitting on a corporate server.

In the last few years, Google started turning this auto-delete feature on when people create new accounts. If you’ve had a Google account for a long time though, you need to turn it on manually.

To delete your Web & App Activity automatically: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage Your Google Account > Privacy & Personalization > Web & App Activity > Auto-delete > Choose how often you want to auto-delete your data.

To delete your Location History automatically: Go to Privacy & Personalization > Timeline (it may be called “Location History” for some users) > Auto-delete > Choose how often you want to auto-delete your data.

To delete your activity manually: Go to Web & App Activity > Manage All Web & App Activity > Click the icon with three dots in the search bar > Delete Activity By > Choose a time period to delete or select All Time. (You’ll be able to delete all your activity, from every source, or make individual choices for different apps such as YouTube and Google Maps.)

There are a number of reasons you might want to give third-party apps and services access to your data from your Google account. You may want to share your contacts with X (formerly known as Twitter) or LinkedIn, or give an app like Evernote access to files in Google Drive. You can also use Google Sign-in to log in to some apps and services instead of creating new accounts.

These arrangements are convenient, but they’re also a privacy trade-off. For example, the company knows every time you use Google Sign-in to open another service, and it harnesses that data for advertising. It’s a good idea to periodically review which apps are connected to your Google account and remove permissions for services you no longer use.

To turn off data sharing: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage Your Google Account > From the tabs on the left, click Security > Your Connection to Third-Party Apps and Services > Click on the row with the app’s name and select Delete All Connections.

Google uses the information it collects about you for targeted advertising. If you find irrelevant ads particularly annoying, you may prefer it that way. But if you want to keep your internet habits to yourself, Google allows you to decouple your personal preferences from the ads you see online. This setting doesn’t disable the Google advertising data machine entirely, but it’s worth adjusting for a small privacy boost. In Google’s “My Ad Center,” you’ll find a few other options to adjust if you’d rather not disable personalized ads altogether. 

To turn it off: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage Your Google Account > Privacy & Personalization > Under Personalized Ads, click My Ad Center > You can find Personalized Ads in the top right > Turn off.

Google doesn’t just show you ads on Google’s own apps and sites; the company also runs a network that operates a huge portion of the ads you see on other parts of the internet. Google has a setting you can use to limit how your data is used for those ads, too. 

To turn it off: Go to Privacy & Personalization > Under Personalized Ads, click Partner Ads Settings > Switch the toggle off. 

Google personalizes its search tool to try to make it more useful to you. That’s convenient, but other people using your computer may get a window into your internet life if you let them tool around on Google.com. For example, Google auto-predicts your typing based on things you’ve searched for, shows details about travel when you type in “my flights” or “directions home,” and makes recommendations on topics like what to read and where to eat.

You can turn all of that off if you don’t want this information to show up. (These features will also be disabled if you turn off the Web & App Activity setting.)

To turn it off: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage Your Google Account > Privacy & Personalization > Search Personalization > Switch the toggle off.

One of the simplest ways to create roadblocks for hackers is to turn on two-factor authentication, also called multifactor authentication. Once you do that, you use a verification code sent by text or provided by an app (which is generally more secure) to confirm your identity anytime you try to use Google services from a device or a browser where you’re not logged in. 

Is two-factor authentication annoying? Yes. But if someone takes over your Google account, it can be an absolute disaster, especially if you have a Gmail account tied to other services such as your bank. 

Once you turn on two-factor authentication, you can also add other safeguards, such as single-use codes you can print out and use if you don’t have access to your phone, or a physical security key that you can plug into your laptop’s USB port to confirm your identity. (You’ll need to buy one of the U2F, or universal second factor, devices separately.)

To turn it on: From any Google website, click the icon in the top right (you’ll need to sign in first) > Manage Your Google Account > From the tabs on the left, click Security > 2-Step Verification.

If you’ve Googled yourself (who hasn’t?), you may have come across some disturbing results: your personal contact information or other sensitive details. This can happen for any number of reasons, but often it’s because of people search engines that make money by selling data such as your phone number, home address, and even your relatives’ addresses to anyone with a credit card.

That’s a privacy problem that can easily threaten your safety. But a new tool lets you ask Google to remove this kind of data from its search results. That will make the details harder to find, though you’ll need to contact the sites hosting the information if you want it gone from the internet entirely. That process can be slow, annoying, and even expensive. However, CR’s Permission Slip app can help—the service makes such requests for you.

An online form lets you ask Google to remove search results that include several kinds of personal data, including copies of IDs, bank account or credit card numbers, passwords, medical documents, your contact information, and more. You’ll need to include the URL of the page where you found the information. Google says adding screenshots to your request is helpful, too.

Google has provided ways for people to make this kind of request for a long time, but a recent policy change lowers the bar for removal. The company says there are still a few reasons why it might deny a request. Primarily, Google may leave the information up if it’s on a government website or it’s considered "broadly useful," which usually means the company judges that it’s newsworthy.

Google Chrome collects so much data about users that some people call it spyware. One way to curb that is to avoid signing into the browser with your Google account. Unfortunately, Google made that harder a few years ago. 

Now, when you sign into Gmail or any other Google service, it automatically signs you into the browser, too, and starts sending off all kinds of data about your browsing to your personal account.

However, there’s a buried setting to disable that. Follow these steps, and you can log in to Google websites and apps without logging into Chrome. Or, as described below, you can try a different browser altogether, and there are good reasons to consider it if you care about privacy. 

To turn off Chrome’s automatic sign-in: On a computer, click the icon with three dots in the top right corner of Chrome > Settings > Sync and Google Services > Switch off the Allow Chrome Sign-In toggle. Ironically, this will then take you to the Google account login page. Log in, then you’ll see a popup in Chrome. Select Use Chrome Without An Account.

If you’ve already logged in to Chrome, logging out is simple.

To sign out of Chrome: In Chrome, click the icon with your profile picture or the first letter of your username in the top right corner > Sign out. (The instructions are slightly different if you’ve already turned on Chrome’s data syncing. In the same menu, click “Syncing to” and then hit “Turn off” on the next page to be signed out automatically.)

Or you can stay logged in while disabling some or all of Chrome’s data-syncing functions.

To turn off Chrome’s sync settings: After signing in to Chrome, click the icon with three dots in the top right corner > Settings > Sync and Google Services > Manage What You Sync > Switch off the Sync Everything toggle > Switch off the toggles for some or all of the categories.

Google Chrome collects a lot of data about its users. That includes location information, search history, and details about your browsing. That information can be linked to your identity and harnessed for third-party advertising.

But web browsers are pretty similar these days. You probably won’t notice major differences if you switch; you might even prefer a different browser. More private alternatives include Safari, Firefox, and DuckDuckGo’s Privacy Browser. All three promise to collect far less personal information.

There’s a caveat, though. Chrome has a reputation for being the best option to protect your security (i.e., defending against hackers) even if it infringes on your privacy along the way. You probably don’t need to worry about that unless you’re a high-value target, like a person who handles classified information or, say, the CEO of a big company. But security may be a bigger concern for you than privacy; you’ll need to weigh the trade-off for yourself.