Prevent Google from recording your online activities and delete data already collected by the search engine with a few clicks.
If you use a Gmail account on a daily basis, chances are you’ll keep it logged in – almost – all the time. Therefore, when you query the search engine, you are doing it while being logged into your Google account, maybe even without noticing it.
The problem with Google is that its search engine and its services are so efficient and practical … that you almost forget that all the data you generate feeds the monster: Google knows everything. Google keeps everything. Google knows all about your little secrets.
To check it, simply go to the page dedicated to managing your activity: your searches, the pages you have consulted, the emails you have searched for, the applications you have downloaded, your every move on the canvas are there.
To justify recording all this data, the Mountain View firm explains that monitoring your online activities allows it to provide you with better results and to be faster, in short, to provide you with ever more efficient service.
But the discovery of these activity histories can frighten the backs of unsuspecting users. Here is how to proceed to check what Google knows about you and above all, to delete this sometimes too private data.
1. Access your activity
To manage your personal data, Google has set up a page grouping together different modules allowing you to consult and modify your data, but also to configure options aimed at strengthening the security of your Google accounts.
Consult your activity on Google my account (Free)
2. Disable the recording of your activity
On the home page dedicated to your account, Google offers several wizards, supposed to make it easier for you to manage your data. Click Manage your data and personalization in the Personalize Google panel.
In the Activity Controls panel, click Manage Activity Controls. You should arrive on a page detailing each type of activity that can be recorded by Google.
Turn off any items that you don’t want Google to keep (Web and app activity, Location history, Information from devices, Voice and audio activity, etc.).
Read the details of the explanations provided by Google for each element. This will avoid ending up with a Google service that you particularly cherish and that would no longer work.
3. Delete the recorded activities
For each item disabled in Activity Controls, you will need to manually manage history to delete it. In the Web and app activity section, click Manage history.
In the left column, enter the Delete activities menu. Google suggests that you delete activities by subject or by product.
Select the date, or the period for which you want to delete activities. In our case, the whole period. Then click on All Products to select the Google service for which you want to delete the history.
Here we want to delete all activities, no exceptions, and therefore choose All Products.
Finally, click Delete to initiate the deletion of all saved items, then confirm your choice by clicking Delete in the dialog box.
Repeat this procedure for all recorded activities: Location history, Device information, Voice and audio activity, YouTube search history, and History of videos watched on YouTube.
4. Delete your purchase history
Return to your account home page by clicking on Google Account in the left column.
Then enter the Payments and subscriptions menu in the left column from your Google Account home page.
Google is aware of everything you buy, the sites you shop from, and even when your order has been delivered. The same goes for your subscriptions or reservations for flights, hotels or events.
Click Manage Purchases to access your complete history. Do not see any witchcraft there. All this information on the purchases that you have made, Google knows them thanks to the many invoices that you receive on your Gmail address.
To delete these purchases from this history, you will therefore have no choice but to delete the email from which they are taken.
Click on an item to access the details, then click on the i button and then on Order origin.
A pop-up indicating the source of the information appears. Most of the time, the purchase was found in your Gmail account. Click View Email to open the source message.
Then click Upload this message to Gmail to open the message in your Gmail inbox.
By removing the email from your inbox, it should also disappear from your purchase history.