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  Privacy FAQ for Web History

Web History

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Privacy FAQ

Privacy FAQ for Web History
  1. What information must I provide to sign up for Web History?
  2. What information do you collect when I use Web History?
  3. How do you use the information you collect when I use Web History?
  4. What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the Web History service?

1. What information must I provide to sign up for Web History?

To use Web History, you'll need to register for a Google Account. At that time, we'll ask you for some limited personal information, including your email address and a password which we'll keep on our system in an encrypted form. We require this log-in information in order to protect your Google Account and your web history from unauthorized access.

2. What information do you collect when I use Web History?

In order to provide the service, Web History saves information about your web activity, including pages you visit and searches on Google. Over time, the service may use additional information about your activity on Google or other information you provide us in order to deliver a better search experience. The Web History Privacy Policy will be updated to inform you of any substantive changes to the service. Also, as stated in the main Google Privacy Policy, when you use any Google service, we collect additional information including your Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

3. How do you use the information you collect when I use Web History?

Web History uses the information from your web history or other information you provide us to improve your Google search experience, such as improving the quality of your search results and providing recommendations. In addition to enabling the Web History functionality, the information we collect when you use Web History may be shared among all of our services in order to provide you with a seamless experience and to improve the quality of our services. We will not disclose this information to other companies or individuals, except in the limited circumstances described in our main Google Privacy Policy, or with your consent.

4. What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the Web History service?

You can choose to stop storing your web activity in Web History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in Web History Help. If you remove items, they will be removed from the service and will not be used to improve your search experience. As is common practice in the industry, Google also maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.