
See the things you’ve searched for, visited, and watched on Google services - hokkos
https://myactivity.google.com
======
tinco
Excellent, I like how it weaves my girlfriend looking for the perfect bra
through my research on collision search strategies in physics engines.

Would Google in any way discern between those two sessions? Me sitting at the
desk doing some hobby coding performing a query like "DBVTBroadPhase", her on
the couch on my laptop looking for inspiration performing queries like
"michelle branch instagram".

To a human it doesn't take much to jump to the conclusion that two totally
different persons are using the same account at the same time.

But maybe that isn't even of interest to google. Me and my GF are basically
one entity to them. We frequent HN and skinnycurvy.com, we like Michelle
Branch and Steve Klabnik (;)), we do pilates at the gym while at the same time
play underwaterhockey at the sports centre.

Any ads Google shows us might have a 50% chance of being shown to the right
person, and that's probably good enough. Maybe they get lucky and I'll mention
some womans brand I saw in an advert to my gf sometime.

~~~
SilasX
Would it be worth the effort to set up some kind of "mixer" service, where
your requests will be routed through random other people's accounts? The goal
is to destroy the information value of your search history: "Yeah, I searched
for horse costumes, but so did everyone else in the pool!"

Probably would be easier just to use an anonymous account for every search,
but is it easy to destroy all the patterns associated with the searches that
would indicate it's the same person.

(The concept is similar to those proxy services out there that pay people to
let them use their "good" IP address to e.g. scrape sites that will otherwise
automatically block "obvious" server farms. Also Bitcoin mixing pools.)

~~~
looserof7
Check out Google plus settings, and others you can opt-out for everything.
When I checked my activity with above link, my activity is absolutely nil. But
I'm using that account for very long time. Opt-out every possible thing.

~~~
SilasX
I think I'd have to trust google to respect that. :-P

~~~
whyagaindavid
I am surprised no one suggested
[https://search.disconnect.me](https://search.disconnect.me)

------
1gn1t10n
Ahh... It's so satisfying to see the stream of everything I was doing on
Android suddenly stop when I switched to Cyanogenmod _and_ not linked my
e-mail account.

The trick was to use K-9 Mail. Otherwise, when configuring the e-mail (Gmail),
the default mail application adds the entire Google account and the link to
the mothership is reestablished. Although I have installed GApps, I
transitioned to a dummy account per device plus Xprivacy, plus NetGuard.

Long before Android, the stream had dropped to a trickle when I started
sandboxing the Google account to a special session for Gmail. Everything else,
searches, youtube went on an incognito window or to a separate Firefox
profile.

I knew it to be effective from the constant e-mails I was getting that "Google
does not recognize your sign-on". Guess what, Google, I want it that way! Now
myactivity.google.com confirms it.

~~~
tonylemesmer
So I'm using stock LG G3 Android Marshmallow (completely stock manufacturer
ROM). I have Google settings kinda locked down as much as possible and I've
been carefully managing app permissions since I upgraded from Android 5.

My google activity shows only google maps searches from the device and some
google website searches from desktop (probably from when I happened to be
logged into GMail and made a search query via google.com).

I use Gmail on Android, Signal for SMS (no-one I know uses Signal) and Firefox
with self-destructing cookies and uBlock origin (I use a similar setup on
desktop too - to prevent persistent logins) I can't see any other activity
being logged. That's not to say that it isn't flowing through Google's pipes
somewhere or other.

My point is that I'm only conducting basic privacy measures but (as in, not
having to root or reflash my phone) - and not having most of my activity
recorded in this dashboard.

~~~
1gn1t10n
I'm a bit surprised, I was using the stock Android for Nexus and in my case
the results were logged. Just as other people are reporting: every single
application usage, call or what-have-you. I also had turned off everything I
could find in Settings -> Google Account.

------
blfr
I'm always surprised how little Google manage to do with all that info. I have
a personal Google Apps account and their absolute highest achievement from
knowing nearly my entire location history over the past three years, searches,
current position, having all the contacts, calendar, list of my apps, even
purchase history (through email receipts if they wanted it) is Google Now
_occasionally_ correctly suggesting the next destination.

Other location suggestions? Crap unless explicitly entered in the Calendar.
Article suggestions in Google Now? Crap. Despite having my entire Feedly info
(300+ feeds) from which they pull most useless cards. Youtube suggestions in
Google Now are somehow even worse than video suggestions in the Youtube app.
Ads? Complete garbage and borderline fraud against all these companies paying
to advertise mobile games which I almost never play and they know it.

Bizarrely, I have a Google Apps account at work with much, much less info and
it's actually a little better.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Users who use Inbox instead of gmail should get a lot more rich inputs to Now.
Appointments would be deduced from emails, for example, and Now will show you
tracking information taken from orders in your receipts, and much more.

~~~
0xmohit
Now hasn't started reading email _now_. Somebody gleefully mentioned to me
several months back that Now reminds her of bills (due dates and amounts)
_automatically_. Essentially by reading emails from gmail. I was also told
that by evening it'd start telling by itself the approximate time it would
take to reach home.

For some such inputs are _rich_ , for others _scary_.

~~~
honkhonkpants
A computer program does not "read" your email in a meaningfully "scary" way.

~~~
0xmohit
The information thus gathered can certainly be utilized in ways that may be
"scary".

Most don't care anyways.

------
oliwarner
"Only you can see this data"

Side-stepping for a minute that Google and governments can also see this data,
this sort of wholesale data aggregation and presentation seriously ups the
ante for account security.

Getting somebody's Google account from third-party breach-de-jour used to mean
you got their email history, or could pretend to be them... But with this you
have their browsing, app, search and location history. That is to say, you can
discover: What they're doing. Where they're doing it. What they're thinking
about (I search everything). Who they interact with.

Worse, I wasn't prompted for any sort of password. Physical access to my
computer (and I assume phone) now gives easy access historical surveillance
data.

Welcome to the new generation of identity theft.

~~~
rkangel
I noted that even though I was already logged in, it still asked me for my
password (and then 2FA token). That is one step at least.

~~~
pinum
It asked for my password but not my 2FA. Strange.

(I also had no results, though, because I've turned everything off.)

------
falcolas
Funny - I remember opting out of all of Google's data collection years ago. I
went there fully expecting Google to have no activity recorded, as I have seen
when this page (or its ilk) have popped up in the past.

Much to my surprise, it was well populated again, with my web
browsing/searching, YouTube, and location histories all turned back on again.
I don't use the Chrome browser (aside from compatibility testing), and I don't
use Android. I'd be very curious to know how all of this was re-enabled
without my involvement.

Very unfortunate, and another straw for the camel's back.

~~~
vmateixeira
It gets put back on, by default, on every major update.. how convenient..

~~~
andybak
Citation?

~~~
vmateixeira
Unfortunately I didn't click a picture upon my last update. It happened few
weeks ago, maybe a month. Even google keyboard settings were reset. Also, I
have two accounts on my Android and it opted back in on both of them. I needed
to opt-out again on both accounts.

~~~
vmateixeira
Right.. I'm getting downvoted because? Anyone? Just because it didn't happen
to you folks?

Surely it was a mistake to comment without the support of evidences of any
kind, but anyway, I just though I could share my experience.

~~~
che_shirecat
Your original comment wasn't a personal anecdote it was a broad claim that you
haven't substantiated. That's the comment that's being downvoted.

------
cdnsteve
I'm glad to see this data provided back to me, however, I'm very concerned
about Google knowing absolutely everything I do while on the web and on my
Android device.

\- Used Messenger app, sent X messages

\- Used maps, with location data, search data

\- Use phone, with number of calls

\- Used (Any installed app) included how often and what I did.

I've since turned everything off.

While browsing on my phone last night I saw a new Google.com feature where
they were using my email address to try sign me up to email lists at the top
of search results.... Not cool.

~~~
izacus
It's even worse due to all the dark patterns Google adds. For example Maps
will refuse to locally store your previous searches if you don't let google
keep your location history, making the use of application extremely
frustrating.

Trying to use Google Fit, Now, etc. will keep popping up requests to let
Google constantly track your location and web searches with o clear way to
disable those annoyances. And more and more.

~~~
StavrosK
This is, by far, the most important point. Google could make it very easy for
you to use their apps offline, but they don't. The recent searches in Google
Maps not being saved offline is especially annoying to me personally, and
Google seems to think that it's impossible to store data if you don't send
them to Google.

I can see them saying "we didn't want to confuse customers who thought syncing
was broken when they didn't see their searches in other phones", but given how
easy it is to tell the user "you have disabled sync", I don't think there's
any excuse for Google to behave like this.

~~~
tokenizerrr
To me it seems most likely they have a syncing framework/library that takes
care of both the local storage of recent items, forwarding those to the google
cloud services, and retrieving them when necessary. And when you disable the
cloud services, this framework becomes inactive.

Of course, you could say the design of the framework is hostile, or that they
should fall back to something else, but I can see this being considered extra
unnecessary work.

~~~
grive
To me it seems obvious that adding these sync features was the original "extra
unnecessary work". It is a dark pattern that Google is obviously engaging in
to the detriment of their users. They went the extra mile to annoy their users
to gather some more data.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Personally I think the syncing between devices is very convenient.

~~~
izacus
Yes, which is great. But note that they require Location history for it! So to
get saved (and synced) previous searches you need to let your phone upload
your location constantly to Google.

------
bluegate010
This site exemplifies something that really annoys me with Google's material
design framework. On my 13" screen, I can see a grand total of four items at a
time: [https://i.imgur.com/6YJxj0b.png](https://i.imgur.com/6YJxj0b.png)

I really wish they'd consider information density as a plus when designing
pages like this.

~~~
coldpie
It's more than material design, it's all modern design. Most modern websites,
application UIs, game UIs, all have inches and inches and inches of
whitespace.

------
makecheck
The frustrating thing to me about current sharing/observing of data is that
everything is a “trapdoor”: if your data leaks out, there is probably no way
to regain control (“privacy panels” are nothing but a feel-good measure that
still depends a lot on bug-free software and the goodwill of others). You only
need to fail to protect your privacy _once_ , and after that it almost doesn’t
matter what you do.

We _must_ rethink infrastructure to the point where the only data that we
transmit is data that is inherently useless after a time. If I do something
like revoke my key, it should be _impossible_ for anyone to further use that
data. Expiration dates should be baked directly into protocols so that
revocation of keys and expiration are the same thing: either I revoke my key
myself, or my software revokes it for me but _no one else_ (and their buggy or
insidious software) gets to decide how to respect the expiration time.

~~~
pdkl95
What we need to do is build a Ulysses pact[1] into the infrastructure. This
worked for a while with the w3c regarding patents. I highly recommend watching
Cory Doctorow's (very) recent talk[2] on this idea, where he observes that
engineers are vulnerable to incremental corruption of principles.

[1] An agreement, contract, or bylaw that prohibits some type of action (e.g.
a union negotiator who's payment and continued employment is contingent on
_never_ negotiation away the pension).

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlN6wjeCJYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlN6wjeCJYk)

------
laser
Funnily I've gotten pretty used to seeing my logged browser history the past
week or so intermixed with a few other friends as I've built this webapp
([http://www.websee.io/](http://www.websee.io/)) that anonymously aggregates
browsing activity from all the users and displays the content with the highest
recent crossover, basically sharp peaks in browsing distribution across all
URLS.

It's odd to me that Google collects all this data, but doesn't really seem to
offer any specific applications that depend on it, individually or in
aggregate. Even though they have trends, they don't have any lists like Alexa
of top traffic websites, despite the fact they have a better sample than
anyone, and could make such information available.

I guess I can just hope that between the more "interesting" ads they show me
and whatever other magic they use the data for to improve their services, that
it's worth letting them have it.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Your history is a silent input to search which radically increases search
quality. Your browsing history would show up to you as chrome omnibox
autocomplete syncing across devices and the ability to open on one device tabs
that are open on your other logged in devices, if you use Chrome.

------
codq
Extremely excited to learn that Google is tracking my DuckDuckGo searches from
the ChromeBar.

~~~
0xmohit
If you are using Chrome, then you don't need to worry at all.

Your browser is uniquely identified regardless of your network location or
browsing mode or profile or whatever.

~~~
ivm
Ok, that's it, time to switch to Safari. I was using private windows for
searches for years but had no idea about unique browser ID.

Also Chrome crashes multiple times a week on macOS nowadays.

~~~
krisdol
Honestly Safari is far more battery efficient than any other major browser
available on OS X. Whenever I want to watch netflix or HBO and have only about
an episode's worth of battery life left, I switch to safari and usually gain a
real 10-15 minutes on the battery estimate. The CPU runs cooler streaming HD
video than both Firefox and Chrome.

~~~
ivm
One more awesome thing: accessibility is always enabled in Safari.

Chrome and FF keep it turned off by default for performance reasons.

------
whym
It seems that this page lists activities I have done intentionally, such as
queries I entered.

I'd be much more interested to see what data I gave to Google unintentionally
- e.g. what Google-provided ads I saw on non-Google sites, what sites with
Google Analytics I visited, etc.

~~~
dyladan
This seems the closest thing
[https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?product=27](https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?product=27)

~~~
e12e
Kind of funny that these pages require you to log in with a Google account. I
don't believe Google won't record _any_ data without the browser in question
being signed in...

------
bikamonki
I immediately deleted all activity from all time, however, I do not trust this
was truly deleted nor that it was never shared "anonymously" with third
parties.

------
jasonkostempski
It seems every few weeks some new account tracking feature turns up that I
have to clear and disable. Considering this had stuff I though I cleared last
time, I'm pretty sure "Delete" doesn't mean jack to Google. The only thing
keeping me on Google is a pretty simple calendar and spreadsheet script I use
to track my finances. If I can find an alternative to that, I'm Audi 5000.

------
mikegerwitz
Can we start a thread (this one) listing the data that people see available,
for someone who doesn't have a Google account and is curious what sort of data
are collected?

There's some stuff scattered throughout the comments, but it'd be nice to have
a single spot.

~~~
testrecord
I don't own an android phone, so there may be some more I don't see, but heres
my list:

Web & App activity (search activity on apps and in browsers)

Location History (Creates a private map of where you go with your signed-in
devices)

Device Information (contacts, calendars, apps, and other device data)

Voice & Audio Activity (storing your voice and audio inputs to your account,
for example, when you say "Ok Google" to do a voice search)

YouTube Search History (Store your YouTube searches)

YouTube Watch History

They all have an opt out toggle.

------
oDot
A long time ago I opted out of Google Map's search history.

A few months ago I searched for a business on maps, and had to type the full
name. The second time I searched for it, it came up the top suggestion.

I do not trust these "privacy features" since.

~~~
makecheck
Web sites definitely have the ability to attempt profiling based on what they
are _allowed_ to see (e.g. your IP address, browser, OS, typical window size).
They simply guess that it is still “you” and return what “you” just did.

~~~
oDot
It was on Android's Google Maps app using 3G

~~~
leesalminen
That could possibly be a local cache though.

~~~
oDot
I did some tests and you are correct! Nice catch

------
whamlastxmas
It's safer to assume everything you input into a device is being recorded
regardless of settings. If I want privacy, I'll use Tails OS with Tor. Since
that's a pain to use I just don't do or write anything on the internet I don't
want tracked back to me.

~~~
gryphonshafer
I have this argument with my wife every few months. She posts things on a
popular social media platform and sets them "private" in full expectation that
the content will only be shared with those she selects. Then she gets pissed
when she later discovers the privacy settings didn't work the way she
expected.

Anything pushed to the internet should be assumed public unless encrypted
using open source encryption tools you completely control in a safe zone (like
in Tails). All internet activity should be assumed to be logged somewhere,
somehow. I don't even 100% trust Tor.

------
rajathagasthya
Stupid question, but can Google (or Bing) associate what you searched for or
which link you clicked in incognito searches? I've always wondered how truly
incognito they are.

~~~
Mahn
Well of course. The only thing the browser incognito mode guarantees is that
no local data will stay around (cookies, cache, history, etc), but beyond that
there's nothing stopping Google or any other online service from collecting
and extrapolating data, even if you are not logged in.

------
buremba
If I understand correctly, you can prevent Google to track your activity in
this page:
[https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)

~~~
macintux
The frustrating part about both prevention and tracking is that you can't find
out what Google is doing to you _without_ an account.

What, as someone who avoids Google accounts and most of their services like
the plague, do you know about me? <= question I'd like answered

~~~
pavanky
I am assuming it is on the same level as a guy sitting on a bench in a park
watching people everyday. He notices certain people going to the same coffee
shops around the same time of day, he notices others like to come out for a
smoke a few times. He may even notice the types of coffee / clothes they
prefer and build profiles in his head. All this without knowing the people
personally.

Now this person could be doing this for fun, or he could be sent there for
research (for advertising) or for surveillance.

Why is it then people are paranoid about a website collecting stats
anonymously, but do not so about going into public places?

~~~
e12e
I don't know about you, but I'm not going public places in my underwear at 3
in the morning. It's a little absurd to state that there's _no_ expectation of
privacy on the web.

That, and Google isn't like one man sitting on a corner. It's like a network
of guys, on every corner - that compare notes every evening. Regardless of
_why_ they do that, it's hard to call it anything other than surveillance.

------
58028641
I might switch to DDG or StartPage now.

~~~
jdimov10
Why now? How did this page change your mind? If anything, it's a big positive.
All web portals collect data about you - Google at least shows you what they
know and give you some amount of control over it.

~~~
58028641
I did not realize google recorded which links you clicked. Edit: I knew they
recorded it. I did not know they associated it with your profile.

~~~
Jemmeh
That seems like quite a natural thing to collect to improve their search
algorithm at the very least. "Are people finding what they're looking for?"
basically.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's not necessary to run trackers _on everyone, all the time_.

Sampling works. Randomly selecting accounts for inclusion _and immediately
dissociating that account identity from the data_ would provide substantively
useful data.

Much the same way as it is possible, on the basis of 100 - 300 _randomly
selected_ G+ profiles to gain a strong sense of what the level of public
activity _of all 2.2 billion profiles_ (in use as of early 2015) was.

Sure, you can increase accuracy, somewhat, by bumping up that sampling count
to 50,000 profiles. As I did. Though that (and monte-carlo resampling of
subsets of the profiles) substantiated the trends which were clear from the
first 100 or so results. Or you can bump up the value to 500,000, as Stone
Temple Consulting did. Which again, largely re-substantiated the results I'd
found.

Google receives something on the order of _one billion searches per day_.
Sampling a _very_ small percentage of those would provide _very_ accurate
results, at far smaller _processing_ cost, and moreover, _at far smaller data
disclosure risk_.

 _Data are liability._

Even if the concern were, say, edge cases regarding specific terms and the
like, that would be possible to explore with targeted random sampling
(stratified random samples). All very-well-established statistical techniques.

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq)

~~~
Jemmeh
Well just making sure people are finding what they want is only part of it.

Since so much of their revenue is from ads, the better their targeting, the
more money they make. If they have all this data on a person, they can target
on a per person basis. And that money is probably talking louder than any care
about liability from data based on how much they're collecting. They're a
business, they have to have revenue in some way.

I'm making some assumptions, please correct me if I'm wrong.

------
graeme
What are best practices for blocking tracking on iOS?

What I'm doing now is:

    
    
      Vpn
      Logged out of Google maps, YouTube, etc. 
      Safari privacy settings to most private. Only exception was allowing cookies on current site only, rather than never
      Focus by Firefox with all privacy options checked 
      DuckDuckGo for search.
    

Anything else?

Also, how do you do a non indented list in hacker news? I have never figured
this out.

Update:

I added some stuff. I began using 1blocker. Disabled all cookies by default,
but am whitelisting them on site only for a few sites I have to log in to.

Using this site to test. Now with Vpn on, only hardware, software and
gyroscope are leaking. Not sure there is any way to block this on iOS.

[http://webkay.robinlinus.com](http://webkay.robinlinus.com)

~~~
dredmorbius
Non-indented HN lists: seperate items by two carriage returns. I typically
number mine:

1\. First item.

2\. Second item.

~~~
graeme
1\. Thank you!

2\. It works.

3\. I'm happy. This will make for better comments.

------
benologist
This needs a much more efficient way to purge everything instead of the three-
clicks-per-day.

Edit: there is: [https://myactivity.google.com/delete-
activity](https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity)

~~~
gvurrdon
Does this also delete location history?

------
drusepth
This is awesome. Crazy to be able to analyze activity so in depth.

Does anyone know if there are any opt-in data sources that feed into this? I'd
like to keep it as comprehensive as possible.

------
richdougherty
I'm looking forward to using Firefox's new 'Contextual Identities' feature so
I don't have to run separate browser profiles:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/tanvi/2016/06/16/contextual-
identit...](https://blog.mozilla.org/tanvi/2016/06/16/contextual-identities-
on-the-web/)

~~~
dools
I use this: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/multifox/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/multifox/)

------
i2shar
I _always_ browse and search incognito, lately on Opera with free VPN. That
takes care of my desktop/work search history not being associated with my
account/IP.

But what is particularly insidious is the mobile click tracking. I am wary of
clicking news items or links in Google Now that might reflect on my intentions
in an undesirable way.

------
dredmorbius
My history is refreshingly empty.

Or should I say "histories" \-- there are multiple Google accounts involved,
few having any variant of the names I'm known by in meatspace.

Still, for some reason, there's a bunch of Google Shit I Don't Use which I
cannot simply get rid of or turn off. Instead I've got to laboriously go
through each one (for each Google profile), and ensure that all tracking and
history are disabled.

It'd be rather nice to have that fixed. After all, linking G+ and YouTube
accounts just went so well, right?

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/y0ss_vplsmhsagqvf23fiq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/y0ss_vplsmhsagqvf23fiq)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6746731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6746731)

------
mderazon
I'm really happy to see this transparency. I wanna see Facebook doing
something like this

------
spaceisballer
That last data points they have from me is April 20, 2015. Maybe I locked down
all my privacy settings then. Or I guess it helps to be using an iPhone.

~~~
pingec
Perhaps you have these on OFF

[https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)

~~~
ThatGeoGuy
Interesting use of the language here: Google does not allow you to turn
settings off, it merely allows you to PAUSE them. Say what you want about the
end result, but the way they weasel around with words here makes me feel
uncomfortable.

------
ohitsdom
It's only showing Youtube activity for me, I must have some privacy settings
on search to disable this but can't remember changing anything...

~~~
djent
Strange, it's not showing any of my YouTube activity, and that's the Google
service I use the most.

~~~
icebraining
Same here. In my case, I'd bet it's because I still use my old profile from
before the G+ merger (I never agreed to use the new one, despite their
insistence).

~~~
ohitsdom
Yeah I have two types of Youtube accounts tied to my Google account. One is my
official full name, and one is my nickname that I used before Youtube started
trying to force people to use their full name. This activity site only shows
activity from when I use Youtube under my full actual name.

------
MOARDONGZPLZ
For those of you interested, and I didn't see it in the above link, this is a
link to all your Google Location History, it must only be Android because I'm
not seeing a lot of travel I did while I had an iPhone:

[https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

~~~
greggman
It's not only Android. I use iPhone. I use Google Maps. I intentionally have
location tracking on. I'm not sure which apps contribute but I assume all
google apps can or do.

[http://imgur.com/g0St0b1](http://imgur.com/g0St0b1)

~~~
honkhonkpants
This feature has moved back and forth from maps to Google Plus and back to
Maps over the years.

------
stirner
They don't show you the dossier if you don't log in, even though they
certainly have one.

------
exabrial
Given all this, why does Google News ABSOLUTELY INSIST I live in St. Louis
when in fact I do not?

~~~
nacs
They're probably doing some basic geolocation based on your IP only for Google
News.

------
jaseemabid
Got there, and deleted all of it. ~10 years of search, browsing history and
all other activity.

I feel good.

------
imron
Excellent. Clicking on the drop down allowed me to delete everything.

I thought I'd already turned everything off, but there were still a few
youtube searches in there from several years back, I guess from before I'd
turned things off fully.

------
tlrobinson
Is there any way to dump the raw data?

My wife and I maintain a list of ridiculous oddball Google searches we've made
in the past (no, you can't see it). It would be interesting to try to train an
AI to find the ones we've missed...

~~~
dredmorbius
Check the Data Liberation Front / Data Take Out.

Google actually are pretty good at providing that, and I think it _does_
include search activity, if requested.

------
geomark
I'm only seeing the very few times I've signed into Google to upload a video
to YouTube. I infrequently use Gmail on my Android but no signs of it in my
activity - aren't Gmail logins along with location logged?

------
fibbery
Wow the filtering controls are pretty terrible. No way to type in dates, for
one.

~~~
Ankurkkhuran
You can use the epoch time in the url for the filtering. That is lot easier
than using a picker.

~~~
fibbery
Thanks for the tip!

------
sheeshkebab
Thanks - deleted all of my stuff and turned of all further collection.

gosh google...

~~~
mangeletti
Frustratingly, I think what " _deleted all my stuff_ " might actually mean is
" _deleted my access to all of that stuff_ ".

~~~
whamlastxmas
Even if it did delete it, it could also be " _deleted this particular copy of
my data_ "

------
dom96
Wow, my activity goes back all the way to 2006. While it is very interesting
to see what I've been searching in 2006, it is also very scary knowing Google
has this data.

~~~
SquareWheel
There's a tool to bulk delete that data if you're not comfortable with it.

[https://myactivity.google.com/delete-
activity](https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity)

------
bojo
Huh, I turned off web search tracking years and years ago. Glad to see they
(apparently) honored that and the only thing that was being tracked was the
random youtube visit.

------
AngeloAnolin
Just another way of saying that whether in the browser or mobile device and
you're signed in to Google, any stuff you do that touches Google is being
tracked.

------
y04nn
When I want to download my searches, it goes up to 1 year. Does google not
keep more than 1 year of data? Is it required to them to remove data after 1
year?

------
rampage101
That is so crazy that do login is needed if you are already signed into
Google. I am also surprised they are sharing this feature with users.

------
tclover
No activity. Some activity may not appear yet. :)

------
beyondcompute
I'd switch to Apple the month it assures me _it_ doesn't store _all that data_
about myself.

------
tempodox
Hmm. I'd have to sign in, giving up even more data. I'd rather delete all of
my cookies every day.

------
mirimir
I wonder how many Google staff can view these data for arbitrary user foo. Is
LOVEINT an issue, as with NSA?

------
phil248
Great, let me waste some time analyzing an in-depth report on how I waste my
time!

------
Aoyagi
Yeah, all I have there are three Youtube videos I watched in 2015 (even though
I do use my Youtube account almost daily). I'm content with this.

What I'm not content with is that they're showing it in a wrong language, but
I guess I can't ask for good webdesign from someone like Google.

------
ausjke
Is there a panic button that I can press now to 100% opt out of this ____?

Google is effectively transforming itself from an ad company to a big/huge
brother, the real big brother that now knows everything I do. Facebook is no
better either.

~~~
ausjke
the disgusting part is that, that activities logging is all on _by default_ ,
and when you delete them you have to pick one activity a time(there is no
reset all logs to zero option), google you're indeed evil.

~~~
ausjke
[https://myactivity.google.com/delete-
activity](https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity) that does have an
option to delete everything, just did that.

------
lucaspottersky
Their date widget is ridiculous.

It doesn't allow you to type dates. :sad:

------
uberneo
An Analytics solution on top of this data would be amazing ..

------
uberneo
I wonder if we can download/scrape all the data..

------
supersan
I was not expecting to see my Reddit activity on that list.

~~~
mistermann
Where'd you see that, I don't see anything on mine.

~~~
supersan
My activity is full of Visited "then some link on reddit". Guess reddit
accounts for majority of my visits, so maybe that's why.

------
jdimov10
"You can easily delete specific items or entire topics. You can also change
your settings and decide what data gets associated with your account."

I guess that's nice. I wonder if they'd still keep the original data points.

~~~
Spooks
I wish they made it even easier, a delete all would be great, or a delete
between these dates.

~~~
icebraining
There's a "Delete Results" option in the three-dots menu. You can just search
between two dates and then use that feature.

------
cloudjacker
From a UX perspective, I thought I was only searching for certain things on
certain accounts, but saw the majority of those searches index under my
employer's non-default google apps account.

Thats not what I was going for at all.

------
sickbeard
More like "anyone can see this data if you don't log out"

~~~
dredmorbius
You _are_ required to authenticate again to see the information, so it's
somewhat proof against casual access.

This does require a strong password though.

------
jomamaxx
Does anyone not feel that this is deeply problematic?

What's worse is the faux 'Silicon Valley' ethos / koolaid they put on us.

A regular company doing this does it for obvious reasons.

But Google sticks to their 'Do No Evil' mantra, which I find entirely
hypocritical: 'We say we are Doing No Evil, ergo, we are not doing any evil'.

I find it doubly disturbing.

They're even worse than classical companies, and yet somehow through their own
branding koolaid would have us believe that they are 'more moral'.

~~~
bogomipz
Cognitive Dissonance. F Google.

------
vmateixeira
This is just what they want you to think they know...

------
mpitt
Wow, I know Google knows a lot about me, but apparently it can predict that
I'll use Telegram on March 15, 2016 at 4:53 AM!

(Either that, or my phone briefly had a very incorrect time setting.)

~~~
zeven7
I don't understand this comment. "predict" "March 15, 2016". It's already 4
months past that date.

~~~
mpitt
Whoops! It actually said 2061 but my fingers autocorrected that for me :/

------
reddit_clone
I use three different browsers.

Chrome : Work related applications only. Minimal extensions.

Firefox: Locked down. (NoScript, Privacy Badger, uBlock origin) For general
web browsing and searching.

IE: For gmail and google apps and nothing else. I like to see google
frantically suggesting I use chrome every time I access GMail !

------
lucb1e
I'm really happy to see that the last thing I did on any Google service while
logged in, was June 27th. This means Self-Destructing Cookies is really
working and all embedded Youtube videos in pages don't keep the cookie active.

~~~
Ankurkkhurana
Can you explain a bit more on this ?

~~~
lucb1e
Well I'm happy that it's a while ago that Google could attribute anything as
belonging to me, from a privacy perspective.

~~~
mderazon
I think he/she meant the self destructing cookies

~~~
lucb1e
Self-Destructing Cookies is an add-on that deletes cookies after they are no
longer in use. When I log in to example.com and close the tab, all cookies set
by example.com will be deleted (after a configurable time, default 90 seconds
I think). It has a whitelist to prevent certain domains (that you want to stay
logged into) from having their cookies deleted. It does the same for
localStorage and other such technologies.

Very simple, but very effective in preventing tracking.

------
bogomipz
This is horrifying. Are they recording everything even when you aren't signed
in to your Google account?

Why do I need this at all? Why do I care about what I searched for 5 years
ago? Time to move off of Chrome. Does all my data with Chromium get hoovered
up as well?

