In just a few days (on March 1, to be exact), Google will enact a new privacy policy that allows the search giant “to gather, store and use personal information,” according to Digital Journal.
One of the biggest changes of the new policy is that Google will consolidate the privacy policies for its nearly 60 products, introducing a uniform policy that will be consistent across all Google products.
According to Google, the company will “use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content—like giving you more relevant search results and ads.”
Despite the aforementioned—and other—benefits, privacy advocates are concerned that Google’s new policy will track and store too much personal information about users. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for one, recommends that all Google users delete their web histories prior to March 1.
Once the privacy policy takes affect on March 1, users can’t opt out unless they completely give up Google. Prior to that day, however, users have the option to delete their Google web histories. If you care about this and want to delete your Google history, here’s how:
How To Delete Your Google History
Go to Google.com and sign into your account.
Click the drop-down menu that appears in the upper right-hand corner of your screen (as pictured above).
Select Account Settings.
Select Services.
Click the link for Go To Web History next to View, Enable or Disable Web History.
Click Remove All Web History.
And with that, you’re all set. You’ve essentially hit the “pause” button on Google’s ability to collect data about you and assign it to your Gmail and/or YouTube accounts. If you decide to opt-in to Google’s data collection policies, you can hit “resume” at the top of your Go To Web History page, as pictured below.
What do you think? Does this step to protect your browsing history from search seem attractive to you? Will you be deleting your Google history? Or are you moving into a new era of Google privacy with no cares about your search records? I’m not sure where I stand yet, but I’d love to know what you’re thinking.
Image by mnemophobe via Creative Commons
