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Google used to store automatically all information on a user’s daily activities coming from the search engine, YouTube, Maps, or Gmail. Things changed, and the company introduced for the first time a special data management page for its users.
Daily Activities Control
Adopting a more relaxed approach to data management, Google inaugurated a dashboard entitled “My Activity” that allows users to control the privacy aspects of the company’s services. The history information which is stored separately for each site is now available to monitor directly from the new page.
“My Activity” provides users with a full history of Chrome browsing, image searches, search queries, watch history on YouTube, or viewed Google Now cards. Android users could observe that almost their whole life is listed inside the Google history details.
The list is searchable, and it can be filtered on different criteria like a date or type of service. Google will also offer a daily report on the number of accesses and the services or platforms most used.
The Maps history is stored on a different page, but it still can be found in a menu inside the My Activity page.
Marketing Control
Just as important, Google offers an Activity Controls page that permits users to stop the historical recordings on any of the company’s services. Among the data that can be set as private, there are the location history, voice, and audio activity, or device history.
Google also uses data collected from the user to offer more relevant ads, which now it expanded to third-party sites. For example, Google will also collect data coming from Chrome browsing and partner sites and ads.
The good news is that any user can opt out from this new option and turn off the display of ads selected by taking into consideration the user history on Google services and websites other than google.com.
However, the company informs that the ads will still be present, with the sole difference that they will be less relevant and will not remarket companies that already received online interest from the user.
Another type of targeted marketing may be one focused on the general location of the user, for example, the city or the state. Moreover, ads could be based on the type of the current page or app that a user has opened.
A solution for users that want to have less history-based ads is to erase all cookies.
Image Source: YouTube
