How to delete your Google, YouTube histories - before midnight
Google's new unified privacy policy goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, and you'll lose this option.
How to delete your Google, YouTube histories - before midnight
Jeff Gelles, Inquirer Business Columnist
Like it or not - and three dozen state attorneys general, among others, have serious doubts - Google's new, unified privacy policy goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. March 1 - whatever your time zone. But there is something you can do today that you won't be able to do come midnight: delete the Google and YouTube search histories associated with your personal profile.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers handy step-by-step directions for erasing your search history here. And you can click here for instructions on deleting your YouTube search and viewing history.
Google has a page that explains how to clear the history from its various products.
Why might you want to? Maybe you don't. Perhaps you don't mind that Google just wants to cash in on all the data it's amassing about your Internet search and viewing habits. Lord knows a lot of companies are trying to do the same.
For its part, Google is talking up the benefits of a simplified, unified privacy policy. Via email, a Google spokeswoman said: "Our updated Privacy Policy will make our privacy practices easier to understand, and it reflects our desire to create a seamless experience for our signed-in users. We’ve undertaken the most extensive notification effort in Google’s history, and we’re continuing to offer choice and control over how people use our services."
On the other hand, if you use Gmail and other Google services, it's fair to say that Google enjoys access to an extraordinary amount of data about you. Electronic Frontier says your YouTube habits "can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, and health concerns."
As for your general search history, EFF warns:
Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.
The letter from the attorneys general says:
Maybe you don't believe you have the choice to stay away - not if Google has you hooked into its ecosystem, as it certainly has me.
But if you're concerned about everything it knows, or just don't want to see all its inferences about you in ads or offers, at least you can start tomorrow with a cleaner slate.
You need to publish more articles like this.— tdoc
Handy tip, since no one seems to point this out. Google chrome has offered a very useful function since its inception that allows you to browse the internet without saving it to your search history, without amassing cookies or any of the other things that would allow google to gather info on you web activities. Its called incognito browsing. You access this by hitting control+shift+N. It opens a new window and anything you do in that window remains, well, incognito. It's pretty cool! And then you have nothing to worry about as this article makes it seem you do. Cheers- I should point out for those not internet savvy that you have to have chrome open prior to hitting control+shift+N. Hope this helps a lot of people!
Comment removed.- Good point, but this is only relevant on your local machine. Google's privacy policy still allows them to save your recorded searches while you are using "incognito mode". — greenbuff
- Comment removed.
- Thanks, Jeff.— gho_matt
I'm not shocked that there are only 7 comments under this article. Bring up sports, bring up celebrities, bring up inner city kids causing chaos on the streets of Philly and you'll have 300+ comments (usually racist). But bring up something incredibly important about your internet security and it goes right over most Philly.com readers. And that's americans, not paying attention to the important stuff. If you want even more security from 3rd party websites, try using the Disconnect add-on and No Script.— selophane43- Thanks for the good advice!— kbradyshea
- If your doing the right things who cares where you have been. It is only the criminals that care about know what they have been up to.— Earl J
- As others have mentioned, use of the incognito mode and no-script are great ways to limit your exposure online. With other browsers you can set the cache and cookies to delete at the end of every session. Additionally, use of an anomymous proxy server (there are hundreds out there for use) can and should be used. It makes it harder for Google to send location specific ads (and to gather that data on you).— Yoda117
- Does anyone know if using Ghostery or Ad-Blocker help limit the information that Google can gather?— BigRoundRed
- You will be assimilated.— ICDogg
- Comment removed.
- Question - does this apply to using google's search engine if you dont have any "sign-on" account with google?— sphl girl in fl
Reach Jeff at jgelles@phillynews.com.
