Currently many people believe that their data is not known to anyone , they think this because they do not have a bank account or because they are not registered in some government institutions or simply because they are not a public person.
Unfortunately, for them we have bad news , you can access information that they did not even know. We can know your preferences regarding music, where you were, people with whom you exchange information, among other data.
The question that would correspond at the moment is how they know all those things about us, immediately comes a simple answer “with Google My Activity” . In this post we will show you everything you need to know to keep your data protected.
Index:
What is Google My Activity and what is this tool for my Android ?
We can say that through Gmail, Drive, Google Maps, Chrome and other tools that belong to the giant computer search engine, Google knows everything about you, much more than you can imagine.
My Activity is a tool that was launched in 2016 and shows all the activity we do on our mobile phones or computers, and consists of showing us, through a form chronologically, the accumulation of data about us, which is installed and collected every time we use one of the services that Google has and we mentioned at the beginning.
In principle, it is the user who has to activate the service, but in reality what he is doing is simply approving that the search engine stores its data and that it is subsequently visible, initially only for each one, privately.
As a result of all this, when we browse the Internet we see virtually segmented advertisements for us , for our personal tastes or desires or curiosities that we have searched on the web.
Based on all this Google offers the possibility for the user to choose what data can be saved from each one of us and what data cannot, for this we must delete the data that we leave in our activities.
Why is it good to regularly delete your search record in Google?
Deleting the archives of the activities we had on the Internet is recommended since the amount of our data will be less and therefore will not go hand in hand with commercial suppliers.
Another point in favor is that when we delete the activities in My Activity we can expand other searches and meet new products, another kind of music or singers, and avoid having biased any information we seek in the geographical area where we live, for example .
That is to say that when we proceed to delete those chronological files we gain time and expand our search criteria almost immediately .
Search history, unless we use the «incognito mode « , is the list or record of the pages we have visited with our mobile or desktop computer .
While a browsing history is not only the list of those web pages that we have visited but also adds data associated to those visits, for example, the title of the page we have seen, the time we have remained in said page, where did we click or expand the information, etc.
This is where it occurs, thanks to the programming that browsers have, to be able to go back or go back to previous pages without leaving the browser.
It is also generated thanks to this browsing history, which when search engine searches appear in the name or URL of the pages the color purple indicating that we have already visited that site.
Many people get confused by saying that by deleting the search history they have already deleted and deleted all those files that show our preferences. From now on, you will keep in mind how Google knows more and more about you.
What are the different My application records How to have control over this?
In Google My Activity, we told you before, all the data and activity you have done from your phone or computer are saved. In the “Privacy policy” it establishes all the regulations for which the search engine can use our data.
Generally nobody reads these policies , so we will quickly summarize what are the different records of the applications that we have downloaded and that are saved in My Activity. We will show you how you should have control of each of these data .
Location
If you often use Google Maps , everything you look for, signals as important, paths you have taken and other data that can be dumped in this tool will be saved in My Activity.
To protect ourselves from Google’s knowledge of all the places we have visited, we read the privacy policy we have accepted and tells us that only we can see these places . One way to hide our route is not to have our mobile GPS enabled.
Activity search engines and installed applications
We already told you that the search engine saves all our activities that we did chronologically in the applications of our cell phone and the browser we normally use.
To be able to avoid collecting our data in the search engine, we would always have to navigate in “private mode” or “incognito mode”, in this way Google cannot collect information about our activity.
The browser gives you the possibility to delete your activity by a specific date or range of it, by types of pages, etc.
Videos on YouTube
Although it may seem a lie, Google My Activity also shows all the videos we have searched chronologically and also visited one or more times.
If you need this information not to appear, you must do so through the same platform, which provides to delete the history .
Connection of our devices
Google has the ability through the My Activity tool to store data that for us at first might seem irrelevant such as, for example, time when we set our alarms, our calendars some of which we share them , contacts, music, movies and any other information we have on our mobile .
When you enter this tool offered by Google you will be surprised by all your devices ordered perfectly with the connection time and the activity you performed on each of them.
Voice and audio
In this case, Google informs you that every time you use the activation of the voice and audio function your data will be in charge on any device you access. To avoid this process we must deactivate that permission to Google .
Ads
Everything they want you to buy is based on the data that came from your behavior on the Internet and that was saved in Google My Activity. To avoid this we recommend that you navigate in “incognito mode”
Other services
In our control panel we will find the number of contacts we have on our phones through Google Talk , you can also know the number of applications you downloaded in Google Play , you can even know the amount of email in the famous Gmail email.
In order to have a greater protection of each of these services or applications you will need to go to the part where all the applications are and verify the permission you have granted to each of them.
Steps to query and delete the Google My Activity search history
Next, we want to show you how you should check and delete the search history that Google My Activity has saved about your activity. For this we will divide our analysis into two parts, one oriented to the computer and the other directed to a smartphone.
From the computer
In order to erase all the data on my computer we will perform the following steps:
- We enter the computer with our Google account
- We click on “Data and personalization” located in the upper left margin of our navigation panel
- We choose «Activity and routes»
- And then we go to «My activity»
- Here we will have to go to the upper right corner of the page and choose the option permittedMore’s
- We search and click on «Delete activity by»
- We choose the option «Delete by date»
- And we will see a down arrow in which we have to choose “Always”
- To finalize the process, press accounRemove involved
If what we want is to delete individual elements of our activity on the computer we will follow these steps:
- From our Google account we go to “Data and personalization”
- We look for the option “Activity and routes”
- And we click on «My activity»
- At this moment we will have to choose the element we want to delete for which there are two criteria to find that information, a it is by searching for a date or some keyword and the second is choosing the option «Delete by topic or product»
- Once we have chosen the criteria we are looking for, we click on «More»
- We finish the steps by choosing accounted for Delete here
From smartphone
To erase all our activity from a mobile phone system with Android operating system we will perform the following steps:
- We go to the drawing of the wheel or gear, that is “Device configuration”
- And we look for the option “Google”
- And we choose «Google account»
- Press «Data and personalization» which is at the top
- We search “Activity and routes” and press
- Then we click on “My activity”
- We choose the option highlightedMore under
- Then press «Delete activity by»
- At this moment we are looking for the part that says “Delete by date”
- And we choose the down arrow and then press when it appears consistentlyAll times
- To end the process we click on perceived Delete »
If what we want is to delete some individual elements of our activity the steps are similar:
- Let’s go to the part that says «Device settings «
- We chose chosenGoogle accoun
- Y Then press “Google Account”
- Click on “Data and personalization” at the top
- We search to press “Activity and routes”
- Then we click on “My activity”
- This part opens two options to be able to eliminate the first is with the option of search or filters , and the second option is to squeeze the three vertical points, that is, «More»
- We choose «Element view»
- We look for the element we want to delete and click on deliberately Delete
Tips to maintain and protect your privacy in the digital age
After seeing in depth all that Google knows about us in this part of us, we want to give you some advice so that your privacy is protected.
Read terms of use
Many times in our eagerness to do things with the little time we have we tighten boxes in which we have not correctly understood what we are accepting.
In the conditions of use are all the authorizations that we grant to the Internet sites and also all the rights that they acquire at that time.
We recommend that you read every detail of the conditions of use that have different applications and computer tools.
Account configuration
All the accounts we have, whether they are email or social networks, have a system to grant the permissions to the providers of these services so that they can show our identities.
So you don’t have bad surprises in the future, you should check what you are showing on each of your social networks or applications to the general public.
Cleaning in your computer accounts
If you take care of the order you should not have problems with your own data that could circulate on the Internet. With this we want to tell you that you should periodically clean and order each of the accounts you have both in social networks and in emails to avoid having open doors to migrate your information.
A simple way is to always update the operating system and the applications you use .