

How to see everything you’ve Googled while logged in - ForHackernews
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/04/20/how-to-see-everything-youve-ever-googled-if-youre-so-brave/

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danbruc
What happens when you disable the search history?

A) Google no longer stores your search history.

B) Google no longer lets you see or download your search history.

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pavanky
Those are not the only options. It could be

C) Google stores search history, but it is not associated with your Google ID.

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gesman
...but it is associated with your IP address and Browser's USER_AGENT that
google likely stores.

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avn2109
And also associated with your probably-unique 150 degree of freedom browser
fingerprint.

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amelius
Why does Google need to keep all of this data, when they could just classify
(cluster) people based on their searches, and keep only that information? That
approach would anonymize the data to a great extent.

EDIT: In fact, perhaps users should be enabled to specify the amount of
dimensions in the "cluster space" that Google is permitted to store.

Or, alternatively, specify the "uniqueness" of the data. So, for example, if I
specify that I want my data to be 100% unique, Google will retain all of my
information. But if I specify that I want my data to be 1% unique, Google will
only remember that I'm a programmer that likes Japanese movies (and not the
details, such as specific programming languages I use and specific movies I
watch).

In fact, this could be enforced by allowing Google to only store N bits of
information about me, where N is a user-defined constant.

And this would not only be useful from the viewpoint of privacy, but also from
the perspective of not getting trapped in a filter bubble. [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

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IanCal
> Why does Google need to keep all of this data, when they could just classify
> (cluster) people based on their searches, and keep only that information?

That assumes you can take a pre-generated cluster and add information to it
without having to recompute with all the original information.

It also assumes there's nothing you can do with personal search histories to
either target adverts more effectively or add features, which would absolutely
amaze me.

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amelius
Good point. Please see my note about the uniqueness of the data that I just
added to my comment.

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donkeyd
This is why I (probably naively) often Google things in incognito mode.

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jacquesm
Incognito from an IP that you have associated with one or more google
accounts?

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donkeyd
Hence 'naively'.

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eeZi
All non-ASCII characters are missing from the JSON dump.

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shaurz
I disabled web search history on my account a while ago, but they have re-
enabled without notifying me.

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danielbln
You might have accidentally clicked on one of the nag screens Google throws at
you (in Google Now for example). I turned my search history off a long time
ago and it's still disabled.

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jacquesm
I don't click 'accidentally' on anything and the same thing has happened to
me.

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cmdrfred
"I don't click 'accidentally' on anything" number one thing users say to every
person who works in IT.

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jacquesm
Sure. But I'm _very_ privacy conscious and am _very_ sure that I did not give
google permission to harvest my queries. Not that I have any illusion that
changing that setting does anything concrete but I'm kind of surprised to see
that the setting did not stay in its 'do not log' position. There are
accidental clicks on ads and then there are accidental clicks on privacy
violating features like these and since it's down a few menu options clicking
it by accident is just about impossible.

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cmdrfred
The point I believe the person above is making is that it isn't a few menus
deep. They apparently (I've never seen it) use some dark ui patterns and pop
up a little box "Do you want to turn search history on?" randomly. Unless
someone has eidetic memory they can't really claim they haven't clicked
something like that ever.

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jacquesm
I don't have an android phone, don't use other products than 'search', 'maps'
and 'docs', if there are 'dark pattern' 'do you want to turn your search
history on' in those products that randomly pop up to trap unsuspecting users
then I will discount those as not being valid. One thing I'm sure of: I never
_consciously_ re-enabled my search history, if google wishes to swindle people
that's entirely their problem but I highly doubt that such practices are
ethical, assuming they are legal.

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paulornothing
Well I think this is interesting when I try to turn off sharing my searches
with Google.

> Please note that even when this setting is paused, Google may still use
> searches you make within active sessions in order to improve the quality of
> your search results.

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IkmoIkmo
The curiosity in me wishes I didn't have search history disabled.

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Joona
Don't worry - it's not THAT great. Mine went back to 2007, and taking a quick
look it didn't really remind me of anything.

Maybe I should disable it...

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benlower
I google things using Bing. How can I get this to work?

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marssaxman
And this is why I keep Google accounts quarantined in a separate browser
(Safari), and never ever log in using Firefox.

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jacquesm
What really bugs me is that I switched this off in the past and now find that
it is back on again!

