It’s no secret at this point that Google is a data hoarding hamster, but some realize this after using their services for months, years and even decades. And lets be frank here, Google may offer controls for privacy, but they dug the controls deep into their settings where most users won’t even find or look for them. And no one can really audit if they do anything for real or how much of the data they already sold to 3rd parties and blocking or removing it makes any difference at this point.
But still, there are controls for it and you can use them to at least feel better in worst case scenario lol. Some panels may interleave or share parts of controls, but I’ve listed them anyway for faster direct access.
VIEW AND DOWNLOAD ALL YOUR DATA
Download ALL your data from Google
BASIC GOOGLE CONTROLS
PRIVACY CONTROLS
GOOGLE ACTIVITY
3RD PARTY APPS WITH ACCESS TO GOOGLE SERVICES
DELETE GOOGLE SERVICES / DATA
Delete individual Google products IRREVERSIBLE!
Delete Google Account IRREVERSIBLE!
I also suggest you sweep through all panels and look at every setting in there and decide whether you want them enabled or not. Also, be aware that controlling activity settings will also affect how their products work. For example, if you disable Youtube Watched Activity, Youtube won’t track what videos you’ve watched (at all) and it also won’t remember where you stopped watching videos if you stop watching them half way through.
What is also a bit worrying is the fact there is ZERO controls for GMail in particular, a service/product which stores by far the most of your personal data.
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