How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct
How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct
Google has now given us an option to set search and
location data to automatically disappear after a certain time. We should all
use it.
By Brian X. Chen Published Oct. 2, 2019Updated Oct. 3,
2019, 11:10 a.m. ET
Last year you may have been addicted to Beyoncé. But
nowadays you’re more into Lizzo. You also once went through a phase of being
obsessed with houseplants, but have lately gotten into collecting ballpoint
pens.
People’s tastes and interests change. So why should our
Google data histories be eternal?
For years, Google has kept a record of our internet
searches by default. The company hoards that data so it can build detailed
profiles on us, which helps it make personalized recommendations for content
but also lets marketers better target us with ads. While there have been tools
we can use to manually purge our Google search histories, few of us remember to
do so.
So I’m recommending that we all try Google’s new privacy
tools. In May, the company introduced an option that lets us automatically
delete data related to our Google searches, requests made with its virtual
assistant and our location history.
On Wednesday, Google followed up by expanding the
auto-delete ability to YouTube. In the coming weeks, it will begin rolling out
a new private mode for when you’re navigating to a destination with its Google
Maps app, which could come in handy if you’re going somewhere you want to keep
secret, like a therapist’s office.
“All of this work
is in service of having a great user experience,” Eric Miraglia, Google’s data
protection officer, said about the new privacy features. “Part of that
experience is, how does the user feel about the control they have?”
How do we best use Google’s new privacy tools? The
company gave me a demonstration of the newest controls this week, and I tested
the tools that it released earlier this year. Here’s what to know about them.
How to auto-delete your search history
Most of Google’s new privacy controls are in a web tool
called My Activity. (Here’s the URL: myactivity.google.com.)
Once you get into the tool and click on Activity
Controls, you will see an option called Web & App Activity. Click Manage
Activity and then the button under the calendar icon. Here, you can set your
activity history on several Google products to automatically erase itself after
three months or after 18 months. This data includes searches made on
Google.com, voice requests made with Google Assistant, destinations that you
looked up on Maps and searches in Google’s Play app store.
Which duration should you go for? It depends on how much
you care about getting personalized recommendations.
Let’s say you have been doing lots of Google searches on
celebrities and movies. Google News will recommend news articles for you to
read on those topics based on those searches. So if you’re steadfast about
following celebrity and movie news, setting searches to delete after 18 months
is probably a good option. If you’re more fickle about your interests, three
months may be better.
If you’re the type who doesn’t care to get any
personalized recommendations on Google products, you can simply disable search
history from being retained in your account. Next to the Web & App Activity
option, toggle the switch to the off position.
New to Google’s privacy controls this week is the ability
to auto-delete your YouTube history, which includes searches and the videos
you’ve watched.
In the My Activity tool, click on Activity controls and
look for the button for YouTube history. Click on Manage history and you will
see a similar calendar icon, which lets you set YouTube history to delete after
three months or 18 months.
How and when to use private mode and auto-delete in
Google Maps
Also arriving in the coming weeks is a so-called
Incognito mode in Google Maps. Toggling this on lets you look up and navigate
to destinations without creating a location history. It also prevents others
from seeing your past searches.
To turn it on, open the Google Maps app and tap on the
account icon in the upper-right corner. Then click Turn on Incognito mode.
This could come in handy in a few situations:
- If you are meeting
someone to discuss a sensitive business matter, Incognito mode will
prevent the meeting location from being recorded.
- Google Maps lets you
constantly share your location with someone like your romantic partner. If
you want your location to be kept secret, like when shopping for an
engagement ring, you can turn on Incognito mode.
- Let’s say you are driving and a member of your family is using the Maps app on your phone to navigate to a new address. Turning on Incognito mode will hide your past maps searches from that person.
Google now also includes an auto-delete option for
location history. In the My Activity tool, click Activity controls, scroll to
Location history and click Manage Activity. On the next page, find the icon
shaped like a nut and then click Automatically delete location history. You can
set data to self-purge after three months or 18 months.
For those who don’t want Google to create a record of
their location history at all, there’s a switch for that. On the My Activity
page, click Activity controls and scroll to Location history and turn the
switch to the off position.
Just do it
In offering these privacy tools, Google is a step ahead
of other internet giants like Facebook and Twitter, which don’t provide ways to
easily delete large batches of dated posts.
Yet there’s no one-size-fits-all for how people should
use Google’s privacy controls, since everyone has different lifestyles and
levels of paranoia. To give an idea of how you can tailor these settings,
here’s my personal setup:
- I set my search history
to auto-delete. I rarely use Google Assistant and don’t visit Google News,
meaning I don’t benefit from personalized recommendations. But I’m often
checking Google Maps, and it’s useful to have a recent history of those
searches to revisit destinations. So I set Web & App Activity to
automatically delete after three months.
- I set my YouTube
history to self-destruct. I go in and out of phases that involve cooking
different types of foods, and I like it when YouTube surfaces new recipes
based on recent searches. So I set my YouTube history to auto-delete after
three months.
- I set my location history to auto-delete, too. I use Google Maps regularly, and I go on big trips twice a year. It’s useful for me to let
Google know where I have been recently so that its Maps
app can load relevant addresses and remember places I have been. But it’s not
useful for Google to continue to know that I went to Hawaii last month for
vacation. So I set my location history to auto-purge after three months.
It’s difficult to imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to
take advantage of Google’s auto-delete tools. There’s no practical benefit to
letting Google keep a history of our online activities from years back. So
don’t delay in wiping a tiny bit of your digital traces away.
Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer. He
reviews products and writes Tech Fix, a column about solving tech-related
problems. Before joining The Times in 2011 he reported on Apple and the
wireless industry for Wired. @bxchen
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 2,
2019, Section B, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Set
Your Google Data to Self-Destruct.
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