Keeping you safe online means protecting your information and respecting your privacy. That's why, in every product we make, we focus on keeping your information secure, treating it responsibly and keeping you in control. Our teams work every day to make Google products safe no matter what you're doing – browsing the web, managing your inbox or getting directions.
You can always control your data privacy settings from your Google Account. To learn more about data privacy tools and settings, you can visit our Safety Centre.
Data use for more helpful Google products and services
Activity data allows for more helpful products and services
The activity data saved in your Google Account provides helpful and personalised experiences in Google products, such as faster searching and automatic recommendations. You can control what activity gets saved to your account, download your data or delete your activity at any time.
Data also helps us to:
- Make sure that our services work as intended.
- Monitor outages or troubleshooting issues that you report to us.
- Make improvements to our services. For example, knowledge of which search terms are often misspelled helps us to improve the spell-check features used across our services.
Google doesn't sell your personal information
We do not sell your personal information to anyone. Advertising makes it possible for us to offer our products at no charge. It also helps the sites and apps that partner with us to fund their content. Your personal information is not for sale. We keep your data private at every point in the process of showing you ads. Learn more about how ads work.
How to control your privacy settings
Stay in control of personal info with easy-to-use settingsYou can find key information, privacy and security settings all in your Google Account. We've created tools such as Dashboard and My Activity, which make it easy to view data saved in your Google Account. There are also powerful privacy settings such as Activity controls, which let you choose what activity data is saved in your Google Account.
Go to Privacy Check-Up to help you choose the privacy settings that are right for you.Security Check-Up makes it simple to check your Google Account security status and get personalised tips to strengthen your account protection.
You can also add an extra layer of protection to your account with 2-Step Verification, or Google's strongest account security with the Advanced Protection Programme.
Learn more about how to make your account more secure.When you use Google apps, you can control what data and activity can be used to personalise ads or you can turn off Ad Personalisation altogether. We make it easy to control the data used to personalise ads to you in ad settings. This data includes what we estimate about your interests based on your activity and interactions with other advertisers that partner with us to show ads, and information that you add to your Google Account.
When you sign in to your Google Account, manage how your ads are personalised or turn off personalised ads altogether in your ad settings.
Since the iOS 14 update, Google no longer uses the advertising identifier (IDFA) or other information that falls within the scope of Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy on iOS for personalised advertisements and ad-related measurement.
To learn more about Google Ads and data, go to our Safety Centre.
Depending on your settings, data such as the terms that you search for and the links that you interact with can be stored in your Google Account. This data helps to improve your experience. For example, your recent activity can help you pick up where you left off with Search. Google can also predict keywords as you type and provide quick access to recent searches even before you start typing.
From the Search settings, you can review and delete your search history from your Google Account, get quick access to relevant privacy controls and learn more about how Search works in Your data in Search. You can set search history to be deleted automatically and continuously after 3, 18 or 36 months in your Web & App Activity. To make the experience on your account more personalised, Web & App Activity saves data about the things you do across Google services, including associated info such as location.
Your activity might be stored in your browser, even if you delete it from My Activity. Learn how to delete browser activity.
Tip: To add more security, you can require an extra verification step to view your full history on My Activity.
Location History is a Google Account setting that creates Timeline, a personal map that helps you to remember the places you visit, the routes you use and the trips you take with every mobile device, where all the following are true:
- You're signed in to your Google Account.
- Your Location History is on.
- Your Location Reporting is on.
- Location History is off by default. You have to opt in.
- You can turn off Location History at any time in your Google Account's Activity controls.
- You control what your Location History saves. Learn how to manage your Timeline.
Learn more about how to delete your Location History. You can also choose to delete Location History that's older than 3 months, 18 months or 36 months automatically.
Phones can send location information to apps and websites if your device location setting is turned on, and your app and browser permissions allow it. You can control whether your location is available to any app or website, including Google, through your device location settings. In addition, some Google apps use IP addresses, which are roughly associated with your geography, to estimate your location. Also, some Google apps may get information about your general area from the IP address assigned to you by your Internet service provider.
Important: Apps or websites that you visit, including Google, might have access to your device's IP address. This means that all apps and websites that you visit can usually infer some information about your location. You can prevent this with a VPN.
Learn more about how to delete your activity manually or automatically or follow the steps below.
Important: My Activity doesn't store content or files such as documents, emails or photos. You can manage content or files directly in products such as Drive, Gmail or Photos.
Delete activity manually
- Go to myactivity.google.com.
- Scroll down to your activity.
- Select Delete
.
- Below 'Delete activity', select a time range. To delete all activity, select All time.
- Choose which services to delete activity from.
- Select Next
Delete.
Delete activity automatically
- Go to myactivity.google.com.
- Under 'My Google activity', select an Activity control:
- Web & App Activity
- Location History
- YouTube History
- Select Auto-delete.
- Select the button for how long you want to keep your activity
Some activity may expire sooner than the time frame that you choose.
Delete browser activity
Your activity might be stored in your browser, even if you delete it from My Activity.
- Learn how to delete browsing history and other browsing data from Chrome.
- If you use another browser, check its instructions for how to delete this info.
Delete other activity
- Go to myactivity.google.com.
- Above your activity, in the search bar, select More
- From here, you can:
- Delete certain activity: Below the activity, select Delete.
- Get to the right place to delete activity: Below the activity, select Visit, View or Manage.
For more information on deleting Google Account Activity and data, go to our Privacy Help Centre.
Learn about your privacy in Google Meet
Related resource
How Google Device Policy protects your privacy and keeps you in control
