Stop Google from storing your location and data history with these settings
Tech Industry
Speaker 1: If you use any of Google's apps, you're probably being tracked and just turning off location history in your Google account. Isn't enough to stop these apps from storing your location data. Anytime you Google something or open up Google maps, those apps log your approximate location.
Speaker 1: Google says on its support page that even if you turn off location history, quote, some location data may continue to be saved in other settings like your web app activity, [00:00:30] the company notes, this is designed to make its features more personalized and helpful to users and says it doesn't share this information with third parties or advertisers, but you still might not be comfortable that information. So here's how to turn off Google tracking. So you can do this on Android or on iOS. I'm gonna be doing this on Android. So what you're gonna do first is you're gonna go to your Google account and go ahead and tap on your profile and hit manage your Google account. Then if you scroll down, you'll see an option that says privacy and [00:01:00] personalization, and then you an option to manage your data and privacy. So go ahead and hit that and then scroll down under history settings.
Speaker 1: There's an option that says location history right here. Go ahead and hit that. And then here under location history, you have the option to turn off your location history. So I'm gonna tap that. And then if you scroll down a little bit, you have the option to go ahead and hit pods. And there you go. Now this will only prevent Google from storing new location information, [00:01:30] but it won't delete any previous data that's been gathered to delete old location history. You'll need to go through a few extra steps. So once again, you're gonna go into your Google account and you're gonna go ahead and tap, manage your Google account. And then you're gonna scroll down, go back to manage your data and privacy. And then from there, you're gonna go back to location history. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see an option that says manage history.
Speaker 1: So once you hit that, you'll see a map here that also has a timeline [00:02:00] of the different days. So we can go to two. We can go to yesterday, whatever day you want, let's stick with today. And then what you're gonna do from here is you're gonna go to these three dots in the upper corner here, and then you can delete day. So it'll delete any of the location history from that day. Now, if you're using iOS, you're also gonna see a little trash can in the bottom corner here, and that'll let you delete all of your location history. Otherwise you can go in and just choose whichever day you want to delete from here. In addition to location tracking, you can also stop Google [00:02:30] from collecting your web and app activity. Here's how so I'm back in my Google account and I'm gonna go ahead and click on manage your Google account and then scroll down to manage your data and privacy, and then go to web and app activity under history settings.
Speaker 1: And then there's an option here to turn off your web and app activity. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit that. And then there's all the information here about pausing your web and app activity. And I'm gonna go ahead and hit pause [00:03:00] and we're done. And if you wanna delete all your Google web and app activity, you can do that too. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna go ahead and click on manager your Google account again, and then scroll down to your manager data and privacy. And then go ahead and go back to web and app activity, click on that. And then you're gonna have an option near the bottom here that says manage all web app activities. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit that. And then when you scroll down, you'll see an [00:03:30] option here that says delete. So when I click on that, there's gonna be a popup window that lets you delete your web app activity from the last hour are the last day, all time or a custom range.
Speaker 1: So you can choose whatever you want and say the last hour. And it just deleted the last hour of web activity. And that's it. Now you'll hopefully feel like you have more control over your data and what you choose to share. It's worth noting that there are some drawbacks to turning off Google tracking. Google [00:04:00] uses your location to show you nearby businesses or to surface more relevant information in your searches. So if you turn off that setting, then the ads and search recommendations and information that you get will be more random. But if you value your privacy over a more personalized internet experience, then you might wanna turn off tracking going through these steps will prevent Google from storing local location, markers and information collected from your searches. It'll also keep your approximate location, private, including your home address. If you found this video helpful, don't forget to [00:04:30] hit like and subscribe for more content from CNET. Thanks so much for watching.
