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Remove Google Search History Before New Privacy Policy Takes Effect
- nemoniac 15y agoShow of hands: Who is actually going to do this? Who isn't?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Shank 15y agoAs a person who voluntarily enabled web history for personal use, no.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ezyang 15y agoI've just done so, and I intend on keeping Web History turned off. I simply do not derive enough benefit from having this data around for myself (when's the last time you benefited from Web History), and unlike other permanent data such as G+ posts, comments etc I do not self-censor searches that I would like to conduct, so I find it very plausible that someone with more processing power than me could find out more about me than I intend.
- larister 15y agoI was just about to and then realised that I had turned it off a while ago. The fact that I had completely forgotten it shows that I don't need this data. However, it's also not something I'm hugely concerned about; as others have said the main danger is from some unscrupulous individual gaining access to your account. In terms of Google having access to my data, I would imagine my data will never be seen by human eyes. Having said that, one does need to remember the inherent permanence of data on the internet, as Facebook's timeline has shown sometimes your data can surface in unexpected ways.
- facorreia 15y agoYou don't need it, but it makes search matching more efficient for the people that have it on.
- greyman 15y agoI did it a few years ago, for the concern that someone can log into my account and see or steal that data. The second reason was, that there actually wasn't a practical utility for me to have access to that data.
- ghshephard 15y agoI've always had web history turned off, so put me in category 3.
- pooriaazimi 15y agoI turned it off a couple years ago, but I just removed it, just in case. I don't trust Google any more than I do Facebook.
- dudus 15y agoCall me naive, but I like the idea of having tailored Search results and integrated information and recommendations based on my data at Google products. Google is one of few companies that I trust. So while most people are freaking out about losing some sense of privacy I personally think that it can open some very exciting opportunities and new features. I want to see where this is going and how Google will be able to use my information that he has to provide something valuable to me. I'm happily keeping all my google data and search history. And I'm also ok with Google selling my anonymized profile with third parties. After my password was stollen on PSN PWNAGE and my own Mom broke into my MSN account to delete my contacts on a Rage spree I don't trust many people anymore. So don't think I don't think my info and privacy are not worth my caution. But after reading Google ToS carefully I agree with everything they want to do and I'm ok with it. Most people certainly never read Google's new ToS. a lot of information on the news in the last months and even here in Hacker News are FUD and misconceptions. Google will not own you, they just want to use your data to provide more value to you and it's advertisers. You are not exposed. So top freaking out a little bit. Read the ToS and think about it.
- mansolo 15y agoI likely won't. Reason being, if I want customized, "filtered" searches, Google is where to be. If I want privacy and/or unfiltered searches, I'll use Duck Duck Go and Blekko. If trust becomes an issue with Google, I won't just clear my search history, I'll leave for good.
- shingen 15y agoEver since they made this possible I've had web history turned off / paused. If I don't need that data, they sure as hell don't need it.
- PakG1 15y agoI'll admit I was actually considering switching 100% to another search engine and using purely Firefox....
- glogla 15y agoI'm thinking about this too. But Firefox is so much slower and so unwieldy and annoying.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nekitamo 15y agoAn amusing way to spy on your friends is to create a google account, and then log into it from their computer. Until they log out of your account, you will be able to view their web history. Aside from this, I have avoided this Google feature.
- dredmorbius 15y agoDisabled. Under multiple IDs / accounts.
- Kiro 15y agoDefinitely not.
- Joeboy 15y agoI just did, although I mostly use DuckDuckGo these days anyway.
- rpedroso 15y agoThe official title of the article is "How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect", and the writing itself is much more neutral than this submission title. I'm still not sure why people are afraid of Google's new privacy policy. I understand that there are people who have specific privacy needs, but outside that scope I doubt you have anything to worry about. It's doubtful at best that Google's "log" of you would become compromised (unless your personal account were compromised, but then this would have been a problem anyways!). It also isn't the case that some Google employee is reading row after row of Google's customer DB snooping on individuals. Google isn't some unified entity; your data is being manipulated by advertising algorithms to tailor ads for you. Unless you care about a CPU "knowing" your secrets, or you have specific privacy needs/concerns, none of this is a problem. Maybe someone can surprise me with some good reasons to be concerned, but until then I am trusting Google.
- bootload 15y ago"How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect" the title is 88 char so something had to go.
- crockstar 15y agoMy feelings and the reason that (personally) I don't want this is I spend all day doing online marketing for brands and retailers and I have very different interests outside of work. The system (at present) does not seem intelligent enough to decipher between which of my friends should suggest what film I should go to vs. which should be giving me financial advice vs. which are just backing a product because they're a client. Strictly regarding the web/search history thing, if I work on a campaign for Burger King and browse their site and related products a lot of the day, I don't really want "Burger King" to come up first on a search with local intent for "restaurants in New York", in that instance I'd prefer see the generic results. For me it's not that I don't want Google to have the data or I have anything to hide, it's that I think the "search" experience it creates because of my very different needs in and out of work is poor (and likely to get worse with sharing this data across platform) and I don't want to spend my days having to keep a super close eye on which account I'm currently logged into before doing a search. It's all personal preference and for some this will provide a great experience, and it may get better. For now though, I like the ability to say "no thank you, I like generic search".
- psadauskas 15y agoSomeone should write a Firefox plugin to allow people to anonymously exchange google cookies, like you can with the grocery store club cards.
- dhbanes 15y agohttp://www.googlesharing.net/ http://www.googlesharing.net/
- SquareWheel 15y agoIt sounds good in concept, but I'm concerned that somebody searching for child pornography or similar could be associated with myself. I have the same fear of running a TOR exit node.
- ehsanu1 15y agoIt gives you plausible deniability, which is the point. Nobody can prove you really did those searches (though you can't prove the converse either).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- knowtheory 15y agoIt might give you plausible deniability in front of a jury (emphasis on might), but that says nothing about assumptions or biases made by law enforcement officials or prosecutors.
- swombat 15y agoYes, plausible deniability is pretty useless after the police have arrested you at 6am in your home after bashing down your door, and all your neighbours have found out that you've been accused of being a pedophile.
- 15y ago
- rd108 15y agoI'm confused. What does this actually mean? "You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users." So.... why would I delete this information if Google still keeps it elsewhere? Do I just have no ability to control what data Google collects on me, even if I agree to stop using its services?
- rd108 15y agoNot that I don't trust Google with my personal data, of course.... ;)
- greyman 15y agoI see two reasons why one might want to do it: 1) If someone breaks into your account, that person can steal all your search history. This is why I disabled search history recording a long time ago. 2) It was uncovered that Google passess some of its data about users to third parties, especially ads agencies. Now, with the new policy, you can't be sure that search data leakage will not occur. Moreover, ads agencies use mechanisms like cookie syncing to share user data between themselves.
- tucson 15y ago"It was uncovered that Google passess some of its data about users to third parties, especially ads agencies." Can you provide a source to back this statement? (I am not challenging you, just interested to learn about this)
- Maxious 15y agoI think it's just trying to tell you this isn't a silver bullet for get-me-out-of-google, there are other systems that keep records of when you login/do things or other systems that log searches but don't identify them to you. You just opt out of this specific system.
- magicalist 15y ago
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- shashashasha 15y agoWow, did not know that this existed. Now I know that across 11 thousand searches on Google, AAPL was my top search, and that my search activity spikes on Mondays and declines through the rest of the week: http://o7.no/wiL2jx http://o7.no/wiL2jx
- shashashasha 15y agoWow, did not know that this existed. Now I know that across 11 thousand searches on Google, AAPL was my top search, and that my search activity spikes on Mondays and declines through the rest of the week: http://o7.no/wiL2jx http://o7.no/wiL2jx
- dvdhsu 15y agoAs far as I know, Google Takeout doesn't support Web History. If they supported it, I'd take out my search history in a heartbeat. As it stands now, I do sometimes refer back to it, but I don't think it's worth having it if it means giving up the information to advertisers as well.
- gildur 15y agoThe web history seem to have been off for me by default.
- guynamedloren 15y agoWhen somebody's life is horribly dismembered as a result of Google's insane privacy policy (new or old), please let me know. I'll start thinking about privacy and necessary safety measures at that point. Until then, please stop whining about privacy, because frankly, I just don't see how any of this really matters. My life has yet to be negatively impacted by Google and I don't foresee it happening in the near future.
- crockstar 15y agoTo be fair, I haven't seen a load of claims about how this is "insane" or "horrible" within the context of this article. It just provides a useful instruction as to how those that wish to opt-out, may do so. It's fine that you don't see how this matters but it does matter to some and having the choice and understanding how to exercise that choice is essential.
- guynamedloren 15y agoApologies. I wasn't referring to this article in particular, but the hype in general over Google's changing privacy policies.
- crockstar 15y agoFair enough. I do get your point - people seem to go mad about privacy in general. It does sometimes feel (to me) like people aren't as bothered about it with Google as they are with Apple, Amazon or Facebook, but maybe that's just me. No need to apologise, wasn't trying to call you out or anything, just felt like this was one of the few posts I've read that doesn't whine too much about it.
- guynamedloren 15y agoDownvotes for apologizing? Really?
- guynamedloren 15y agoDownvotes for apologizing? Really?
- potatolicious 15y agoI for one am glad that Google at least provides this option. I'm sure if Facebook, Zynga, or many of the current startup psoter-boys would not, given the same opportunity.
- jhancock 15y agoWhen I go to https://google.com/history https://google.com/history while logged into my google mail account, I get redirected to https://www.google.com/ https://www.google.com/ The redirected Google home page clearly shows me as logged in. Am I doing it wrong?
- __alexs 15y agoI had the same thing, the non-SSL version, http://google.com/history http://google.com/history seemed to work correctly though.
- nickfromseattle 15y agoI'm getting a "This service is not available" with links to a help page that does not exist.
- AgentConundrum 15y agoI didn't have that problem. Google did ask for my password again, which made sense, but I didn't end up on their home page. I didn't specify HTTPS, but I use the HTTPS-Everywhere Firefox extension so the result should be the same. Even so, maybe there is some slight difference which altered the behaviour for me.
- rplnt 15y agoSame for me. What helped is going there manually. Click on the gear icon and select Web History. You will be prompted to confirm login and then you'll proceed to web history page. I guess it's for security reasons so some malicious javascript won't grab your history (that easy).
- adriand 15y agoIt also works if you just google "web history" and click on the search result link, for whatever reason.
- crb 15y agohttps://www.google.com/history/ https://www.google.com/history/ works for me. Any http(s?)://google.com URL tends to redirect to www.google.{local suffix}.
- aschobel 15y agoIs there a way to export the search history? I have close to 45k searches over 7 years, would love to keep that data and mine it myself.
- bnr 15y agoYou can export it as a feed: http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000 http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&n...
- aschobel 15y agoThanks, it's only exporting 922 searches for me. Increasing the num=100000 argument doesn't seem to impact this limit. One would think that your search history should be a core part of their data liberation effort.
- m0tive 15y agoYou can specify the date to export, so could step back exporting batches until you've got everything. https://www.google.com/history/lookup?month=11&day=30&yr=2008&output=rss&num=9999 https://www.google.com/history/lookup?month=11&day=30... It shouldn't be too hard to write a script to scrape you're whole history...
- m0tive 15y agoHacked this together to do the job: https://gist.github.com/1884821 https://gist.github.com/1884821
- oxxx 15y agoDoesn't work for me: export.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- mechanize (LoadError) from export.rb:1 edit: nvm, installed libwww-mechanize-ruby and it's working fine.
- ssn 15y ago
- quink 15y agoyoutube.com doesn't have any obvious method of removing of past watched videos and is even more nefarious than Google will probably ever be (before March 1st, 2012 at least) about tracking visitors. Additionally, YouTube has become pretty much just a branch of the RIAA and MPAA and their local equivalents, and I'd rather burn down my house than allow them access to my data. That's why I've been blocking YouTube from setting cookies on my computer, and that's why other people should do too.
- Zirro 15y agohttp://www.youtube.com/my_history http://www.youtube.com/my_history http://www.youtube.com/my_search_history http://www.youtube.com/my_search_history I am not saying that the average user knows about them, though, but they're not that hard to find. (Also, since you seem to talk about YouTube and Google as separate companies: They're not. Google owns YouTube and their new policy applies there as well.)
- ontoillogical 15y agoI use google apps for domains and I get the following message: "Web History is not available for MY_DOMAIN. Learn more about Google products you can use with MY_EMAIL." Is Google collecting this data and not giving me the option to turn it off, or are they not collecting the data?
- bnr 15y agoIf it's not enabled, the logs are not associated with your account. You could enable the service in the apps control panel (assuming you're the administrator) and check for yourself, though.
- MengYuanLong 15y agoI never realized you could access your search data history. It was really fascinating to see the different visualizations including my search concentration by hour and days of the week. That said, even as a non-statistician, it wasn't hard to imagine the amount of information Google could infer by focusing on an individual. I had a data set exceeding 50k searches with the resulting click-throughs on my account. (Plus, they can of course leverage their massive db to help eliminate anomalies like Whitney Houston) In addition to the basics like big item purchase history, hobbies, and problems (e.g. sickness); I wouldn't be surprised if Google could predict my relationship status and sexual preferences. Custom search results are great, but I'm extremely happy to have been given the option to delete that profile. If anything, it is the single largest factor pushing back to Firefox and possibly DuckDuckGo.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoGoogle makes money from your ignorance. They could put a "Disable all Tracking" button in the black bar at the top of all Google properties, but their business model relies on the majority of people not knowing they're being tracked, or not caring enough to go looking into how to disable it.
- hyperbovine 15y ago"Ignorance"? I don't understand this righteous indignation people have towards online companies who would dare to try make money off the awesome free services they provide. Some of us are completely aware of what Google does. Seeing some personalized ads in exchange for access to all the world's information seems like a fair trade-off to me.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoYes, "Ignorance". He was "ignorant" of the possibility. When you call somebody ignorant, for being ignorant of something, this is not an insult, it is a statement of fact. I don't know where you got "righteous indignation" from. There is nothing righteous about my saying he is ignorant, and there was no anger or annoyance, so I don't know where you got "indignation" from. "Some of us are completely aware of what Google does" And most are not. And that was my point. At no point did I state that 100% of people are unaware of what Google does, so I don't know why you felt the need to add that tidbit. "Seeing some personalized ads in exchange for access to all the world's information seems like a fair trade-off to me." Not really relevant to anything I said. (EDIT:) However, if "seeing some personalized ads," is the only cost you can imagine, then I'm afraid that Google is benefiting from your ignorance too. Here are two more costs: 1.) If your account is compromised, your search history is compromised and could be used against you 2.) If you get in legal trouble, your search history could be used against you "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged"
- facorreia 15y agoInteresting. Although I'm not sure I care if Google applications have access to information about my location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns. I'm a 42, male, married, Catholic software developer living in Brazil.
- Gustomaximus 15y agoI'm not convinced this works as it should. I turned of history a while back and have since repeated "remove all history". But I still get these ads related to searches and email that is too obscure to be co-incidence - e.g. Lately I get shown ads (sometimes multiple times daily) for "Foreign SIM cards" as I googled this about a month ago. Especially on Youtube. Anyone else notice this who has turned off their web history?
- ehsanu1 15y agoPerhaps they removed the web history itself, but kept whatever inferences they made, which are associated with your Google account. Which is about as bad as keeping the history, but it's probably completely separate system, which just uses the history for training purposes.
- lallysingh 15y agoAre you sure they're Google Ads? If you followed a link from the search results, and that link had ads from another search network, that other network would've associated you with that search term.
- magicalist 15y agoor the same scenario, but with doubleclick ads. The FTC(?) agreement for acquiring doubleclick included a clause that they can't mix google account information and doubleclick logging, but as parent said, the sites you clicked through may have had doubleclick ads and associated that topic (or their brand specifically) with your doubleclick cookie. Deleting it should reset it.
- Gustomaximus 15y agoPositive they are Google ads.I'll try deleting the double click cookie as magicalist suggested.
- stordoff 15y agoGoogle associates demographics and interest categories with your account, which probably remain after you purge your search history. You can manage them here: www.google.com/ads/preferences/
- morsch 15y agoI knew about the search history, but apparently a number of people didn't. This makes me wonder: Are there any other semi-hidden Google services which I can "clean out"?
- Zirro 15y agoIf you have a YouTube-account: http://www.youtube.com/my_history http://www.youtube.com/my_history http://www.youtube.com/my_search_history http://www.youtube.com/my_search_history
- mriyasam 15y agohttp://www.youtube.com/my_history http://www.youtube.com/my_history www.youtube.com/my_history
- rea1234 15y agohttps://www.googlesharing.net/ https://www.googlesharing.net/
- downx3 15y agoCan someone possibly paraphrase the new privacy policy? Or at least point out significant changes please.
- gcb 15y agowhen i go to that page with my spam account, which i'm logged in by mistake when i do most of my searches anyway, i get one screen asking to enable web history, with a button saying "no thanks". and i never get to the calendar screen. with my de facto account, it shows the calendar. and there's no way i can find a way to that "no thanks" button
- rubing 15y agowhat a stupid company they are bleeding customers...how frigging disconnected and dumb can you be. CUSTOMER IS #1, you dipshit GOOGLE MORONS. I use DUCKDUCKGO NOW for 80% of my searches b/c they are ethical. YOU ARE EVIL. DON"T BE EVIL!!! HAAHAHAH U LOST ME NOW BABY and U ain't ever getting me back. I am the masses. I DECIDE. I CHOSE AND U LOSE!!!! STOOPID GOOGLE....GOOODBYE.
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoI always use the following link to search google: https://encrypted.google.com/?pws=0 https://encrypted.google.com/?pws=0 And I have search history turned off.
- jellicle 15y agoI'm pretty sure EFF is wrong here. Google's Web History is basically a public version of your search history. You can turn on or off whether you want Google to rub your face in its knowledge about you. But it retains that knowledge even if you turn off the rub-in-your-face personalization part. Google retains a complete history of your interactions with them, which is not subject to this Web History setting, not deletable, not removable, and will be shared across its properties. Short reply: This doesn't remove Google's search history of your searches at all.
- captaincrunch 15y agoSure made me "feel" better about removing it though!
- ecocentrik 15y agoYeah, I've had this feature disabled since it launched and google still seems to return "personalized" search results. If you don't want google to track your behavior, you probably shouldn't be logged into google in the first place.
- alok-g 15y agoDo they not track your behavior if you are not logged in (genuinely asking), using cookies or IP address for example? Sorry if you find this to be a naive question.
- abailin 15y agoI doubt they would be using your IP address to track anything, since a house full of people can be behind the same IP address. I don't know if they use cookies to track you if you're not logged in, but to be safe I would use incognito mode if you are worried about that.
- jacquesm 15y agoInteresting. Can you prove that? If so, this could be a very hot potato. If google states "Your web history is currently empty" and "web history is paused" but they continue to track your searches in a way that is tied to your identity then I think they're in breach of several laws. They could chose to withold the ability to disable tracking. But by giving you the impression that they're not tracking you I think they're definitely across the line if they continue to track you in spite of that. > Google retains a complete history of your interactions with them, which is not subject to this Web History setting, not deletable, not removable, and will be shared across its properties. Is a pretty heavy accusation to make without hard proof. And if it turns out to be true I'd hate to be the one to have to explain to the EU regulatory body how "your search history is empty" can co-exist with "we have a complete history of your activity". If it is a history on my activity then my search history can not be empty and if it is empty then google should no longer have it either.
- shareme 15y agoThe issue is not with start-ups or established players its with US Congress and the DOJ who have consistently used 911 to over-reach to control things so that they do not have to hear dissent. Sort of what the standard Russian citizen experiences on a daily basis, bbut they are not alone in that experience. Thus, when did we become a less free 'Third World Country'? My apologies to citizens in Third World countries as I lack the vocab early this morning to express it in a different way.
- CodeMage 15y agoAfter doing what EFF recommended, the Web History is "paused" indefinitely. If you want to opt out of the service completely, you can use the following URL: https://www.google.com/accounts/DeleteService?service=hist https://www.google.com/accounts/DeleteService?service=hist
- simon 15y agoI use three browsers. Firefox for general browsing (technology and theology), Chromium for Gmail and Facebook, and Opera for blogs. I figure that keeping Google and Facebook in their own little prison should help greatly with privacy. I use DDG for searching whenever possible. Not so much to hide things (as a pastor I got used to being watched 24x7 years ago), but just to preserve what little privacy I have left.
- hackernews 15y agoI've tried this but find it to quite a pain to remember what browser I should be looking at what in. What I want is a browser where I can be logged into Google, and any link I click will open that link in my "private" (not logged into Google) browser. Same with Facebook, Twitter, etc. So I've started developing XUL apps to run each in their own sandbox.
- simon 15y agoI agree that it could get tedious, but I'm compartmentalized (not OCD ;-) enough in how I do things, that it has worked well for me so far. Your XUL apps approach sounds interesting. Can you offer any pointers on what you do and how others could do it too?
- hackernews 15y agoIt's pretty simple right now. I only spent an hour or so on it and will post it to GitHub when I get some more time to iron out a few kinks. Basically you open the XUL app for the service you want to access. It acts as a chromeless firefox browser and intercepts any links you click. If it's an external link it opens it in your default browser where you wouldn't be logged into google preserving a bit of anonymity.
- simon 15y agoThanks. I also found this link http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-xulintro/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-xulintro/ after a little searching. I'll try it out.
- thedangler 15y agoI never had it turned on in the first place.
- da5e 15y agohttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/
- esalazar 15y agoLooks like government doesn't like either, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577239793006074440.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020391830457723...
- jsz0 15y agoThere are probably better ways of doing this but I just use Chrome now exclusively for Google services. I don't login to Google on my primary browser anymore. I'm hoping this will limit their stalking a bit. I don't mind if they read my mail since that's the price I pay for using the service but I'm getting a little paranoid about the other things they might be doing. Better to keep it sandboxed away from the rest of my browsing.