The more you mix and match Web services, the less any one company is able to form a complete picture of you.ĭon't forget that while you're busy surfing the Internet, your browser is also busy making a list of the sites you visit. Try using the venerable Firefox Web browser instead of Google's Chrome. Microsoft's Bing Maps is a good replacement for Google Maps. Alternative search sites DuckDuckGo and IxQuick parallel Google Search in features and performance, but don't collect any private information about you. If you're still concerned about stored information, your best bet might be to avoid using Google Search as much as possible. Instead, you can opt out of interest-based ads altogether by going to. You can wipe out the information by deleting the cookie, but Google will just start recording new information. To accomplish this, it uses a cookie stored in your browser. If you don't have a Google account, or don't usually sign in to it, Google still tracks your history. However, it won't use it for targeted ads or to customize your search results.Īfter your Web history has been disabled for 18 months, the company will partially anonymize the data so you won't be associated with it. Google will still keep your "deleted" information for audits and other internal uses. There is a catch to all this, of course - your information isn't really gone. This will stop Google from recording anything else. Here you have the option to turn off your Web history. Once your information is removed, click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page and choose Settings. You can select as many entries as you want at a time. To remove an unwanted search term, simply select click the checkbox next to it and then click the Remove Items button. Additionally, Google shows you personalized search trends, which can be interesting to look at. You can browse through your searches and find them by day or Google service. You'll see a list of everything you've ever searched for on Google. To see what forgotten secrets lurk in your Google history, go to and sign in with your Google account information. To start, you can clear out your Google search history. However, you can keep a lower profile and put a little more distance between your personal data and Google. If you spend 20 minutes doing research on a gadget, for the next few weeks you'll probably be hounded by ads for that gadget wherever you go online.īecause search sites and other Web services have become so ingrained in our daily digital lives, it isn't really an option to stop using them. Of course, Google uses that data mostly to target you with ads. With that mountain of information, Google can tell a lot about you: where you live, your hobbies, age, health problems, religion and more. Do you know every Google search you've ever performed is stored on the search giant's servers? And that data is cross-linked to your search data from YouTube, Google Maps and any other Google services you use.