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Last Day To Tell Google To Forget You
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."
Gots no Google account, so does that mean they dont track me or that I cant erase the tracking data?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I'm confused. The new policy goes into effect March 1 and today is the last day to erase the old?
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
I already did this years ago, but thank you for pointing it out to those who were not aware of such a setting. I'm sure the government is still monitoring all of this through Echelon though, which makes this meaningless.
Did I say that out loud? Shit sorry.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
I followed their steps, except I don't have any History to delete. Wasn't this an opt-in thing? I know I never opted-in/out and I don't have any history myself.
Next thursday is March 1, not tomorrow. New policy goes into effect NEXT thursday, not tomorrow.
tried to, but it turned out I never enabled this "history" in the first place (or at least Google says so). Am I safe?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Still tracking people no doubt, just now the web history is tied to ip address/computer and not to user account.
Less valuable to them because ip addresses arn't typically static.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The article says this new policy goes into effect March 1st. Today is February 22nd, and tomorrow is the 23rd.
02/23/2012 != 03/01/2012
They need to recheck their logic.
I don't want Google to track me but I do like my YouTube account. So I'm stuck a bit...
-- Cheers!
I signed it to gmail and went to this URL but it's telling me my web history is disabled. I have never disabled it myself so could it be disabled by default?
Just did that. But I'd done it already, and Google claims my web history is "paused". Which probably means they will "unpause" it silently at some future time.
There's this annoying trend towards invisible buttons for things web sites don't want you to do. There's no obvious "sign out" button for Google now. Clicking on your user name will get you to a sign-out option, but it's not obvious. Facebook actually has invisible buttons for opting out of ads. (They're at the right of the ad headline. Mouse over that blank area and a "x" will appear. Click on the "x" and some opt-out options will appear. They don't actually make the advertiser go away, though.)
I went to the history page, but there is no "remove all Web History" button or menu-item. Am I screwed already? did they remove the option?
Do we have any info that you wont be able to disable web history after the change? Or delete it afterwards? That would seriously change my googling habits actually.
Do I win?
about a year ago when i closed my google account(s). same with facebook, although if their shadow-profiling is any indication of 'how its done' then you can expect google to start silently tracking the same inferential data about you as a person instead..
either may have started as amicable services, but both have rapidly evolved into a flagrant, unapologetic breeches of privacy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I see you driving ’round town
With the girl i love and i’m like,
Forget you!
Oo, oo, ooo
I guess the change in my pocket
Wasn’t enough i’m like,
Forget you!
And forget her too!
I said, if i was richer, i’d still be with ya
Ha, now ain’t that some shhh? (ain’t that some shhh?)
And although there’s pain in my chest
I still wish you the best with a
Forget you!
Oo, oo, ooo
However I agree more with the original lyric.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So, which search provider do you trust?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Just tried to delete and found that I never have turned that feature on. So it seems that people concerned with privacy are not actually affected by this at all....
Of course, I use my Google account for the one project on Google Code I am involved in only, nothing else.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I never turned it on in the first place.
I just logged into www.google.com/history and saw my browsing history back to 2007. I understand some of the privacy concerns, but I actually found it interesting to see what webpages I went to 5 years ago. For me, the ability to look back into details of the past that may have left my conscious memory recall seems to outweigh the security concerns. Also, on the www.google.com/history page you can delete individual record items so if there's something IN PARTICULAR that you want to delete... hint, hint, nudge, nudge, say no more.
People actually believe this makes a difference? Seems like folly to me.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Remind me as to why them retaining my search history would be detrimental to me?
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)
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
i deleted everything and disabled it so i get this "Your search history is currently empty."
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
What is the basis for believing this option will disappear once Google consolidates its privacy policies? TFA says that on March 1, "after all your odd searches, secret obsessions and kinky lunch reading is ensconced inside a special database, you won't be able to get to the data any more." This claim appears completely unfounded.
Go to Google History and follow the instructions.
Looks like you slashdotted the EFF. Site is down.
Facts have a liberal bias.
I've read a dozen different articles about this, and I still can't tell: If I have a YouTube account but I've never had a "Google account," does this affect me at all?
One article mentioned "57 services" run by Google, but nobody's listed them. How do I know that I don't have an account at a site (like YouTube) Google owns but doesn't explicitly brand? I'd practically forgotten that YouTube was Google's...
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
"remove all Web History" will just remover _your_ chance to read your own web hystory.
OFC google will keep it and will continue to update it in order to "improve the service" or whatever they call it today.
You should disable JS for google, clean your cookies, refuse cookies, use a proxy. Or just get in the mood to use an other search engine.
You obviously haven't read the fine-print in their new agreement. One of the updates is that GoogleCalendar is changing. Months always start on Thursdays from now on. And there will be 14 months per year. Google's moon-base is still working on speeding up the moon's revolution, but it should be ready [out of Beta] by the end of 2012.
Karma: NaN
YOU can forget about Google!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
... will they automatically enable it?
You can delete the service through here, which means you have no history for them to even have.
https://www.google.com/accounts/DeleteService?service=hist
Okay, this web history thing was easy to check. But day by day it seems I have more and more of this kind of privacy stuff to take care of. Some terms have once again changed, my data is being mined in new ways, hey check your new privacy settings or be sorry. If I actually took throughly care of all this, it would soon become a mini job...
Today I know why I still have /. in my dailys.
the helpful folks at EFF have posted some simple instructions showing how to delete your web history at Google.
That is exactly what I was looking for. Now if only someone could post a mirror, I'd be a happy camper.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
about a year ago when i closed my google account(s). same with facebook, although if their shadow-profiling is any indication of 'how its done' then you can expect google to start silently tracking the same inferential data about you as a person instead..
either may have started as amicable services, but both have rapidly evolved into a flagrant, unapologetic breeches of privacy.
My previous employer required me to have a Google account (manager would publish the schedule on Google Docs). I left the job, closed the account and once closed tried to log back in. Google gave me a message to the effect that the name and password don't match / that there is no account so I go on with my life. Today I see that I need to tell Google to delete my history and decide to try to log in using my old username and password. Surprise! Google lets me log into an account that I definitely closed a year ago. Don't be evil my ass.
When Google launched Google+, I could not create a G+ account because - I was stupid enough to give Google money for Google Apps for my company - thus my Google account was ineligible to be used by G+.
Now comes this history thing. I go to Google, but because I am stupid enough to pay Google money for Google Apps for my company, I cannot access "history" to remove it or do anything else.
Google knew who I was already so it's not like my searches are not being tracked. I guess they figure the money I pay them is an implicit OK to savage my data as they will.
Anyone have a good mail provider I can get SMTP access with? I really want to drop Google and that's really the only reason I subscribe to Google Apps.
I would drop them for search too but I'm not a madman. Nothing else really compares yet, not even Bing...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe I joined Google later than others, but the first thing that I did when I joined Google was turn Web History off so, nothing for me to delete.
However, I agree with other posters that it's unlikely that this would make a difference. I am sure that through a combination of tracking cookies, stored backups, etc. my web history could be recovered with enough effort and resources.
This service is not available
Web History is not available for phormix.com. Learn more about Google products you can use with USERNAME@DOMAIN.COM
What if you live in a country that has actual privacy laws? What if that country states that an IP address is because of legal obligations of ISPs, always relatable to a natural person or company? What if that country explicitly states an IP address is personal data? What if that country has laws that prohibit companies to harvest private data without explicit permission from the owner?
I'd say that this makes Googles new policy illegal and they have to leave that country and stop providing services or track anyone from that country, or adjust their policy and comply. I wonder what is going to happen once the new policy is in place, because that country exists and people have a tendency to go to court over stuff like this.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It's kind of weird that I did this this morning just because I didn't want my wife coming onto my PC and seeing all of the porn searches by hitting a letter on google search.
Hey Tharsman, try: https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=100 where you can replace "num=100" with "num=100000" or whatever... didn't test for upper limit, but I will later :D
(info from http://www.dataliberation.org.../ if this is a dictatorship, it could be worse)
Can a person program a new solution to a problem? Why should anyone be able to stop such a thing? -Richard Stallman
After the first page (which starts at entry 0):
https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000
just start from increasing entry numbers, like:
https://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000&start=960
I left the states 14 years ago, and though I go back to visit occasionally, I'm not even in an ACTA nation! You have to love countries like Norway. While we have endless laws prohibiting just about anything, the 32 policemen in the country just can bother with anything less important than murder. Oh... when annual budget arrives for them, they rush out and arrest everyone they can as fast as they can. So, figure like 30 arrests in one night. The rest of the time, they hang out in down town Oslo making sure that the hookers are confined to the first place anyone sees when they visit Norway, kinda like a welcome mat. I think they take turns with who gets to keep the national theater area safe which is where all the rich girls in expensive dresses that barely cover their privates go to get munchies after getting plastered at night.
I love this place. The best part is, even if the most dishonest man were to stand on a building here screaming at the top of his lungs speaking his mind, it wouldn't matter. People here are mature enough to listen to what interests them and intelligent enough to ignore the nonsense for the most part.
Of course your hidden reference to what most people refer to as the current Orwellian state is nicely placed. Of course, I'm not quite sure that we're at the point where the technology is ready for the thought police concept. Maybe the search result police is the next best thing.
I believe you can goto Account Settings immediately after you signed up the account, and opt-out of things you don't use like web history, google+...
(Just out of my memory. I haven't check if there's any changes.)
Try it for your regular searches too. It's not bad, and it's a way of supporting them. Why do you want to support Google when you don't like what they are doing, especially if there is another option available?
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
If you want Google to treat every service like a separate account, then create a separate account for every service. And learn to use incognito mode for porn and bomb-making and all the other stuff you don't want anyone to know about.
And for god's sake, stop whining about this, you fucking paranoid losers.
Now that is funny.
Hope it doesn't get me busted for DOSing Teh Google.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Except that you can't. When I go to the "Remove all history" page there is no such button as illustrated on the EFF instructions.
Why would you want to do this?
Not only will you be "bound" by the same license agreement as before, they just merge them all together, Google will still track you, you just won't be able to see it anymore?
So what does it matter?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I wanted to see for myself what government agents or advertisers would find when they went sifting through my web history, so I took a close a look through several years of my own web history.
I have scientifically determined that I am an amazingly dull person. I bore myself to tears. I'd rather read the phone book than go through my own web history again.
- Pithy comment goes here.
I'm going to migrate back to Firefox and stop using Chrome, as well as stop using google for the search engine.