Google’s New Privacy Policy, For Your Benefit?
Well, it’s finally here! Google’s new privacy policy is now in play. We have been given solid warnings since January 24 about the changes which have led to a few raised eyebrows.
The reasons for these raised eyebrows is that Google has integrated information from all of your Google accounts, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube, so you are now seen as having a single account from a single user. This is so they know what you like and what you want in order to target advertisements at you. This deeper ad targeting makes it more relevant to you, rather than seeing that ads that make you wonder what they were thinking when the advertisers pushed their ad at you.
With Google consolidating your accounts, the issue of privacy has appeared. Even the French data protection watchdog, CNIL, has released an investigation; however Google have combated this with a statement announcing that it has taken on EU recommendations to streamline and simplify policies whilst providing a higher level, and ultimately, more targeted information to users.
However, the issue of privacy is not all doom and gloom! There are a few measures that you can take to control your level of privacy. Google have added an‘opt-out’ feature that lets you remove previous search history. You can delete your Google history of searches and viewed pages. It doesn’t stop Google collecting data and information about you, but it does prevent targeted ads and customised search results.
Here’s how to remove your search history:
1. Sign into your account
2. Go to google.com/history
3. Choose to ‘Remove all Web History’
This will clear your web history and will stay off until you change it.
So don’t get flustered - although Google have pulled accounts together in order to gather more information, this can be argued as a good thing as we will now be seeing more relevant ads. Google have also given us a get-out clause but will the everyday user know how to stop their history being collected?
