Google Knows a Lot About You. These Five Settings Decide How Much It Keeps

Most people set up their Google account once, click “I agree” and never look again. Years later, that account holds searches, places, videos watched, apps used and ads you’ve interacted with, all quietly feeding a profile that shapes what you see.

The good news is that Google gives you more control than most people realise, and it’s all in one place. The bad news is that it’s spread across several pages with names that don’t make obvious sense, and the defaults aren’t set for maximum privacy.

This guide walks through the Google privacy settings that matter most: where they live, what each one does, and a sensible order for changing them. It takes about fifteen minutes. If you’ve ever wondered about the biggest AI privacy risk being a setting you never checked, this is the same idea applied to the account most of us use daily.

One note before we start: Google redesigns its menus often, so button names may shift slightly. The page addresses below are the ones Google itself links to in its help article on finding, controlling and deleting your account info.

Your Control Panel: Where Everything Lives

Google’s own help page points to four main destinations, plus a guided tour.

• My Activity (myactivity.google.com): see and delete what’s saved to your account, and choose what kinds of activity get saved.
• Activity controls (myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols): the on/off switches for each type of saved activity.
• Ad settings (adssettings.google.com): controls the information Google uses to show you ads.
• Privacy Checkup (myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup): a guided walkthrough that, per Google, helps you quickly find and change most of these settings.

If you only have five minutes, start with Privacy Checkup. If you want to understand what you’re changing, read on.

Step 1: Look at What Google Has Already Saved

Open My Activity and scroll. This is the honest mirror: a timeline of searches, sites and app use tied to your account. You can search it, filter by product and delete individual items or whole date ranges.

Spend two minutes here before changing anything. It tells you which data types matter to you. If you see more detail than you expected, that’s useful information about which controls to tighten.

You can delete by day, by product or everything from a chosen period. Deleting removes it from your account view, though it’s worth knowing that Google may retain some data for security, legal or operational reasons as described in its policies.

Step 2: Choose What Gets Saved Going Forward

Activity controls is the most important page for ongoing privacy. It lets you decide which types of activity are saved to your account. The main one to understand is Web & App Activity, which Google notes also governs Search services history. In plain terms, it controls whether your searches and activity across Google services are stored and used to personalise your experience.

Other controls here cover things like location history and video history. Google manages the Timeline (your location history) on a separate settings page, linked from the same area.

Your options are generally simple:

• Leave it on and accept more personalised results in return for more stored data.
• Turn it off for types of activity you don’t want saved, accepting less personalisation.
• Keep it on but limit how long it’s kept. Look for an auto-delete option in these controls, which lets you remove older activity automatically on a schedule. I couldn’t confirm auto-delete in the help article I checked, so look for it on your own page, since Google changes where options appear.

For most people, a reasonable middle path is keeping the features you rely on while enabling automatic deletion of older history.

Step 3: Take Control of Ads

At adssettings.google.com, Google shows the info it uses to show you ads and lets you adjust it. This is where you can switch off ad personalisation, so ads stop being tailored to your profile.

It’s worth being realistic here. Turning off ad personalisation doesn’t mean you see fewer ads. It means the ads are less based on your personal history. Many people find that tradeoff worthwhile; others prefer relevant ads. The point is that it’s your decision, and the control is one click away.

Step 4: Run Privacy Checkup

Privacy Checkup is a guided tour that walks you through the key settings in order and explains each choice. It’s the fastest way to review everything and is a good habit to repeat once or twice a year. Think of it as a smoke-alarm test for your account.

Step 5: Lock Down the Account Itself

Privacy settings control what Google stores. Account security controls who else can get in. A hijacked Google account exposes everything above, so pair this review with strong protection.

• Turn on two-step verification or, better, add passkeys, which resist phishing. We cover how they work in our guide to passkeys vs passwords.
• Use a unique password from a password manager rather than one you reuse elsewhere.
• Review recovery email and phone settings so only you can reset the account.
• Check devices and third-party access to remove old devices and apps you no longer use.

For a deeper look at who else collects your data beyond Google, see what data brokers know about you and how to disappear.

A Sensible Default Setup

If you don’t want to think too hard, here’s a balanced configuration.

1. Run Privacy Checkup and follow its prompts.
2. In Activity controls, turn off any activity type you don’t actively benefit from.
3. Enable automatic deletion of older activity where offered.
4. In ad settings, decide whether you want personalised ads, and switch them off if not.
5. Add two-step verification or passkeys to the account.
6. Set a calendar reminder to repeat the checkup in six months.

Settings Worth Checking on Your Phone

Your phone adds its own layer. On Android, location, microphone, camera and app permissions are managed in the device settings, separately from your Google Account. Review which apps can access your location “all the time” and switch most of them to “only while using the app.” Do the same for the microphone and camera. On any phone, remove permissions from apps you no longer use, and uninstall the ones you’ve forgotten about.

It’s also worth checking which third-party apps and websites have access to your Google Account, especially anything you signed into with a “Sign in with Google” button years ago. Each is a standing connection to your data, and removing the ones you don’t recognise costs nothing.

If you share a device or account with family, keep in mind that activity from every person using it can land in the same history, which makes the profile less accurate and more revealing at the same time. Separate profiles or separate accounts are cleaner.

A Quick Example: What Changes When You Tighten Things

Suppose you turn off Web & App Activity and ad personalisation, and enable automatic deletion for older history. In daily use, you’ll likely notice a few things. Search suggestions may feel less tailored. Maps may not remember places as readily. Ads won’t follow your recent searches as closely. In return, less of your behaviour sits in your account, and a future account compromise or a data request exposes far less.

If a particular feature matters to you, such as location-based reminders, you can leave that one control on and tighten the rest. Privacy isn’t all-or-nothing, and the best configuration is the one that matches what you actually use.

What Privacy Settings Can’t Do

It’s worth being honest about limits. These controls manage what Google stores and uses within your account. They don’t make you anonymous online. Websites you visit, your internet provider, other apps and data brokers can still collect information about you. And turning features off has real tradeoffs: you may lose personalised suggestions, saved locations or convenient history.

Think of Google privacy settings as one layer: valuable, quick to set, and worth doing, but not a complete privacy strategy on their own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Google’s privacy controls are scattered, but they’re powerful once you know where to look. Four pages cover nearly everything: My Activity to see what’s saved, Activity controls to decide what’s kept, ad settings to manage personalisation, and Privacy Checkup to tie it together.

Set aside fifteen minutes this week, work through them in order, and add stronger sign-in protection while you’re there. Then put a reminder in your calendar, because settings drift, features change, and a short yearly review keeps you in charge of your own data.