Google allows you to automatically delete the data it keeps about our habits. To do this, all we need to do is change an option in our profile
One of the things we need to do often to keep our privacy safe is to delete the data Google collects about us. Whether we’re just using the Chrome browser or one or more of Google’s many apps for Android and iOS smartphones, the data that Big G collects about us is really a lot. Much more than you might think.
This data Google uses to offer us targeted advertising (and that’s a plus for Google) and highly personalized services (and that’s a plus for us). No doubt this makes our online experience much more complete, simple and intuitive, but at the cost of giving Google an impressive amount of personal data. If we don’t like it, then, periodically we can delete that data and gain in privacy, losing in convenience. By the way, since a few months, there is also a method to automatically delete Google history that allows us to have a good compromise between an anonymous use of Google services (inconvenient but more respectful of privacy) and a classic experience, comfortable and full of custom features.
Deleting Google history
To be more precise, we can tell Google to delete the data collected about us every few months. Just go to the My Activities page and click on “Go to Web and App Activities”. Web and app activity is Google’s feature that collects, as the name implies, all our activity on the web (i.e. on the various sites we visit) and off the web (i.e. on all Google apps).
If this feature is enabled we have two possible options to choose from: manually delete the data (i.e. history) of our activities or click on “Choose to delete automatically”. In turn, from this tab we can choose “Keep until I delete the data manually” (i.e. nothing changes: we have to delete it ourselves), “Keep for 18 months” and “Keep for 3 months”. After selecting our choice we have to click “Next”.
If we chose 3 or 18 months Google will show us a list of the data it is going to delete (i.e. those collected more than 3 or 18 months ago). If we agree, we press “Confirm”. This option is also valid for the future: every day the data older than 3 or 18 months will be deleted, according to our preferences.