When Does No Mean No?

NOTE: This alert is about privacy and not about security. I will, from time to time, have some alerts that address privacy. Different people have different opinions about the subject; some are very concerned and some are not concerned at all. This piece is about education and choice.

The answer to the question in the subject is, apparently, not when you tell Google not to track you. They make their living tracking you, as does every commercial search engine and most social media sites, so this is not much of a surprise.

Google has been accused of storing your and my location history even if we tell it not to. Google does not deny this. Google says that they document this in their privacy policy and if you really want them to stop tracking you, you have to tell them in multiple different places. They also say that tracking your history helps them improve your experience (translation: they can show you ads that pay them more money).

This is true if you use Google Search on an iPhone or Android phone or if you search, apparently, for chocolate chip cookies. After all, Google needs to be able to tell you where the nearest cookie store is. It is also true if you use Google maps or a whole host of other apps. And, while Google is the subject of this post because billions of people use it, it is likely true of hundreds if not thousands of lesser known apps.

By the way, turning off your GPS is not sufficient either. True, if you turn off your GPS then they can’t locate you as precisely, but even with it off, they know what cell tower you are connected to or what WiFi you are logged in to. In that case they might only know your location to within a few hundred feet instead of a few feet.

I did find two different places to turn off location HISTORY tracking, but there may be more and those are only for Google. If you use Bing or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, each of those have their own tracking capabilities.

Over time I will write about more of these, so keep watching.

Some people will not care about this; that is fine. Others will be totally annoyed. That’s fine too. The point is that you have the option to choose.

Note that I am going include a bunch of screen shots. As Google changes things, these screen shots may be out of date and if I find out about that, I will update this post.

The first place I found was in my phone’s browser search feature. On your phone, open your browser – in this case Chrome. Don’t go to any web site. Other browsers will probably work differently.

NOTE: You can click on these images to enlarge them. Also note this was done on an Android phone. Likely things work differently on an iPhone, but the outcome (tracking you) is the same. When you scroll down to the second half of this post (myactivity), that part will be the same for Android and iPhone users.

Click on the three dots in the upper right and you will see the second screen.

Select SETTINGS and you will see the next screen. It will tell you who you are logged in as and allow you to change that if you need to. Then select search engine and you will see the next screen.

Most people will have Google as their search engine. Click on locations and notifications are allowed (this is the default) and you will see then next screen. It will show you how many megabytes of data they are storing about you and which options are turned on.

NOTE: If you have the GPS turned off in your device at the moment, location will not be clickable. That just means that you can’t change the option, not that Google is not collecting data, so you have to turn it on, just for a moment.

Select location access and you will see the next screen.

Change the option from allow to block (assuming you don’t want Google to track you).

Now you will see that the option changes to block for current search engine.

See how simple this is?

Google only wants to help you.

Think you are done? Most people do. You are not. You are a little less than half way done.

PART 2 – MyACTIVITY

Now you want to open your browser and go to https://myactivity.google.com . You will see this screen. You have to sign in again, even though you are probably already signed in. This is a security feature. Unlike the first part, this should be the same for Android and iPhone users.

Now you will have to skip past the next three screens telling you how wonderful they are and that you are in control (assuming you have a PhD is computer science).

Now you will see a screen with your activity. Scroll down because it probably goes on for a ways. You can see for example, places that you have done Google searches for, among lots of other things.

Click on the three dots and you will have the option to delete this data in a fairly granular way. Select delete activity by and you can delete HISTORY but not stop the future. You will see the second screen when you click on delete.

So now you have deleted history, but maybe you want to stop the data collection in the future. Click on Activity controls and you will see this screen.

Click on the web and app activity slider and you will see this screen.

Scroll down and you will see web and app activity. Tap on the slider and you will see the next screen. It will tell you that if you stop Google from tracking you, the earth will likely stop spinning and we will all go flying off into space, so, they implore you, please don’t do that.

Select PAUSE

You are ALMOST done, but still not really done.

Scroll down and you will see:

LOCATION HISTORY. Tap on the slider and repeat the same drill.

Scroll down and you will see:

DEVICE INFORMATION. Yup, rinse and repeat.

Scroll down some more and you will see:

VOICE & AUDIO ACTIVITY. Yup, one more time.

Scroll down and you will see:

YOUTUBE SEARCH HISTORY. Yup, again.

Finally, scroll down to:

YOUTUBE WATCH HISTORY and repeat the drill.

You can turn off any combination of these features that make sense to you.

SEE HOW SIMPLE THIS PROCESS IS? Google is counting on the fact that 99+% of the population won’t do this. Otherwise, they lose money.

Now that you have this post you can choose what you want to let Google do with your stuff.

It’s kind of cool being a tiny, little bit more in control.

Some information for this post came from the Guardian.