Find Out What Google Tracks About You

Vihar Desu
Nov 6 · 2 min read

In Short

I’ve written a simple Python script that extracts out all the raw data that Google saves about you. Google has a service called Google Takeout. You can find the link to Google Takeout here and the Github Repository here.

The Google Takeout Homepage

Google has a feature that allows you to download a large, confusing bundle of all different kinds of data that it keeps about you. That data may include: Chrome Browsing History, Location History, Google Search History, Youtube History, Clicked Advertisements, Searched Images on Google Images, Searched Locations & Directions on Google Maps.

You can download any and all data that Google has on you.

If you want a way to extract all that information into neat CSV files, head over to my GitHub repository here, and follow the instructions to get your own data!

Simple (may be slightly confusing) Instructions

The code basically cleans the files that Google provides for you (they don’t make it super easy in some cases to understand what you are looking at). Even if you have a little bit of HTML experience, you have to comb through things to get what you want.

However, once you run the Human Data Point script, you’ll have nice clean CSV and JSON files neatly organized in your “Raw” Folder. It should look something like this.

Thanks for reading, and let us know if you do something interesting with the data!

Human Data Point

A think tank for personal data, privacy, digital footprinting and the quantified self

Vihar Desu

Written by

Human Data Point

A think tank for personal data, privacy, digital footprinting and the quantified self

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