Your Google account: Managing your privacy and safeguarding your data
Your relationship with Google
Google is great at the services it provides, that’s why a lot of people have accounts with them.
If you adopted their services as soon as they came out, you probably have a decade’s worth of personal data with them. And that data doesn’t stop at emails, chats and photos — there is a lot more in that locker.
What does Google store about you?
Google just stores information you provide them while using their services. But, that’s just about everything. To give you an idea:
- Location history- If you’ve given your device (cell phone) access to your location, Google is keeping track of wherever you go 24/7. Your “secret” vacation to Bali in 2017 was not so secret, after all. 🤭
- Google Search and Google Chrome- All your search history and websites you visit are stored. This information dates back to 2005, when they first rolled out this feature as part of their user experience program. That’s more than a decade’s worth of your search data. (Biting your nails at that one?)
- All apps- YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Docs have all the data you provide them with.
- Android- Even your texts and app usage are being recorded. (Yes, they know about your PUBG addiction and your Angry Birds phase)
“Where can I see all this information?”
Go to Google Dashboard for your account where you can see all the services you use.
Click on the tiny downward arrow against any service to get a gist of your data on that service. Use the three dots to explore your data on it.
“Make it stop, I feel naked!”
By this point, you’re probably (and hopefully) a little worried about your privacy. But you love Google’s products!
With increasing concerns over privacy, people are shifting towards more privacy-conscious options or are, at least, wanting to.
Within this Venn diagram, if you are anywhere in the grey area (no pun intended), there’s a way out.
Data privacy going forward
You can opt out of several options that allow Google to record information about you.
- Head out to Activity Controls and opt out of anything you feel uncomfortable with. You can toggle Web and App activity, location history, YouTube history and Ad personalisation.
2. You can also change your privacy settings through their Privacy Check up link
Safeguarding your Google data
In a recent post, titled “Your data is more vulnerable than you think — Part 1”, my goal was to show through various examples, how you can be locked out of years’ worth of your personal data.
While the probability of lockouts is low, the impact of losing your precious trove of photos, e-mails, chats, tweets and professional work can be very high.
A prudent approach would be to take regular back ups of your data.
Downloading your Google data
Google’s Takeout service offers a simple way to download all your Google data in one go.
Step 1
Log in with your Google account on this link to view your dashboard:
Step 2
Go to the “Download your data” link to go to the Takeout page
Step 3
Select all the apps whose data you want to download. Start with deselecting all and choosing as you go through the list.
Step 4
Click on Next to select the maximum size of each of your archived file and how you want to receive the download link. Use the default .zip option since it opens easily on all systems.
Step 5
You will get an e-mail once your data is ready for download. Depending on the size of your data, the archive could take a few minutes to upto a few hours to get generated. Proceed to download it once it’s ready.
“Great! I have my Takeout zip file. How do I go through my data?”
Your mails are stored in MBOX format which can be viewed through different e-mail applications like Thunderbird, Eudora etc.
Calendar data is stored in ICS format and iCalendar can be used to read it.
Contacts are downloaded in VCF format that can be opened in Outlook.
You can view documents and spreadsheets through Microsoft Suite or Open Office applications.
A simpler option
We are building DataPod — a desktop app that helps you download your online life locally, and then organise and search through it.
That includes your Google Takeout. You don’t need to download multiple applications to go through the multitude of data.
Visit our site, provide us with your e-mail address there, and we’ll notify you when we launch! 😇
