One of our goals at Google is to give users meaningful choices to protect your privacy. Here are some of our most popular tools that help you control your information:
Account Activity gives you more insight into how you’re using Google services while signed in and helps you to manage your information on Google. If you sign up, you’ll get access to a monthly report where you can learn things like how much email you send and receive, from which countries you have signed into Google and what your top Google searches have been.
Find the answer to the question, “What does Google know about me?” by visiting the Google Dashboard, which shows you information stored in your Google Account. From one central location, you can easily change your privacy settings for services such as Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Picasa, and Profiles.
The Me on the Web section in your Google Dashboard can help you understand and manage what people see when they search for you on Google. It helps you set up Google Alerts so you can monitor if information about you appears online, and it automatically suggests some search terms you may want to keep an eye on.
We think you should be able to control the information you store online. Google Takeout lets you move data in and out of Google products.
Google+ circles help you manage your friends and contacts. You can put your friends in one circle, your family in another and your boss in a circle all by himself – just like real life. Then you can share relevant content with the right people.
You can choose whether Google may use your +1’s and other profile information to personalize your content and ads on non-Google websites, including applications or other clients.
Google+ Ripples creates an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network.
When you want to browse the Internet in stealth mode, Google Chrome offers incognito browsing. Pages you open and files you download while in incognito mode aren’t recorded in Chrome’s browsing or download history, useful if you’re planning a surprise birthday present or party! You can also use this feature in Chrome for Android and in the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android’s default browser, letting you browse the web on your phone or tablet in private.
Encrypt the search traffic between your computer and Google, helping to protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. You may find that your search is automatically encrypted, but if you don’t see it in the address bar, visit: https://www.google.com
When you’re signed in, we may personalize search results based on your previous activity or through results that are tailored to you – pages shared with you by your friends, Google+ posts from people you know, and content that’s only visible to you (like private photos from Google+ and Picasa albums). Personal results are part of Search plus Your World, Google’s search experience that blends personal results with universal results, and helps you connect with people you care about. You can toggle personal results on and off for a particular search by clicking the personal results button or the globe button on the top right side of the search results page. You can also turn off personal results all together.
If you’re signed in to a Google Account and have turned on Web History when you search, it helps you see your previous search terms and which results you’ve clicked on. We provide you control by letting you delete individual entries, pause collection, or opt-out of the service altogether.
View and edit the information Google uses to show you ads on Google search and Gmail, and interest-based ads on websites in Google’s ad network. Add or edit information to affect how ads are selected for you, or opt out of seeing customized ads altogether.
This browser plugin enables you to permanently opt out of the DoubleClick cookie, which is an advertising cookie that Google uses. The plugin lets you keep your opt-out status for this browser even when you clear all cookies.
Install this Chrome extension for a one-step, persistent opt-out of ad personalization performed by companies adopting the industry privacy standards for online advertising.
We automatically blur identifiable faces and license plates in Street View to protect individual privacy. We also provide easily accessible tools so you can request further blurring of any image that features yourself, your family, your car or your home. You can also request the removal of images that feature inappropriate content.
YouTube was created for people to share ideas with the entire world. But sometimes you might just rather share it with a small group of friends or keep it to yourself. You can do that by choosing either unlisted or private when you upload your video.
Don’t want Gmail chat conversations to be stored in your account? Choose to chat “off the record”. You and your Gmail friends can see when a chat is taken off the record, and you’ll be instantly notified if your friend decides to chat on the record again.
Google Analytics generates statistics about visitors to websites, such as the number of page views or times of peak traffic. If you don’t want your anonymous browser data to be collected by Google Analytics when you visit sites that use Google Analytics, you can install an opt-out in your web browser.
Google Latitude makes it easy to share your location with your family and friends in real time. You can adjust your privacy settings in Latitude so that you share as much or as little about your location as you want, with whom you want.