Last Day To Tell Google To Forget You 238
itwbennett writes "Google's new privacy policy will consolidate all your data at google.com — unless you erase it first. And today is your last day to do it. The change goes into effect tomorrow. Which is why the helpful folks at EFF have posted some simple instructions showing how to delete your web history at Google."
Re:Sign into my what? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they track you - Or at least try as hard as they can. It also means that you're not really affected by this as the data is not associated with a Google account.
Re:Sign into my what? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're not signed in, they store your history for 180 days, but you can opt-out of that without a Google account: http://www.google.com/history/optout [google.com]
Re:What history? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe it was opt-in for a long time, but then it became opt-out for (new?) accounts. The change was announced here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html [blogspot.com]
Re:What history? (Score:5, Informative)
This does in fact appear to be true. I happen to have two google accounts, as I have two @gmail.com addresses. When I went to the newer one, my entire search history was there as I apparently didn't realize I had to opt out when I set it up. It has now been deleted per the EFF instructions. When I logged in to the older one, it said web history wasn't enabled, and so that account must have been created while web history was still opt-in.
Of little to no consequence (Score:5, Informative)
From their website (http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54067):
You can remove all Web History from your Google Account at any time. While signed in to your Google Account:
Go to google.com/history.new window
Click Remove all web history.
However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users.
(emphasis mine)
Re:Sign into my what? (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks slashdot! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sign into my what? (Score:5, Informative)
... because you haven't enabled Web History for your domain, so there's nothing to erase.
If, for some reason, you want Web History enabled on your domain, you can do it from the domain control panel.
On your seperate note (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sign into my what? (Score:5, Informative)
Me too. I went in to wipe out my history, and even though I have gmail and youtube accounts, there's no web history. Somewhere along the line the people stirring up Google paranoia neglected to mention that almost nobody has this 'web history' thing enabled. If I as a regular Slashdot reading google user was never prompted to set this up, and didn't even know how to get to the page where you set it up, I imagine the affected population's pretty small.
Am I missing something?