How to prevent Google from collecting your personal information

Google knows a lot about you.

I recently showed you the amount of information stored on your location and how to disable it. But there's so much more, including everything you've searched for, every YouTube video you've watched, your voice recordings, the computers and phones you use to access Google, and more.

Google has a tool that lets you see what information it collects, and it's easy to disable its collection of this type of private information. It also allows you to delete this information individually.

Do not forget that disabling some of these options may affect your experience. If Google does not know the YouTube videos you watch, for example, it will not know how to recommend videos that are similar to the ones you like. If he does not know your location, you may not be able to use some features of Google Maps correctly. If you do not share your voice, Google Home or its assistant may not always respond when you want.

• First, go to https://myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup/. Here is the main page in which you will work.
• If you have not done so already, sign in to your Google Account.
• Browse through each category now, such as web activity and apps, YouTube search history and location history.
• Click "Manage" under each of them to see how Google uses your information and disable any sections you do not want to collect.
• Then select the "Make ads more relevant to you" section.
• Disable "Ad Customization". This means that Google will not target ads based on the interests that it knows, using other tools, such as Search or YouTube.
• Now, tap "Control what others see of you".
• Click "Change Shared Endorsement Settings" and disable it. This will prevent your reviews of places such as restaurants or apps from appearing in the Google Play Store or Google Maps.
• Now, tap "Help people communicate with you". I leave this because I like that people can search me through video chat and other Google apps, but you can disable it here.
• Choose "Manage your Google Photo settings" now. Here, you can disable Google's ability to recognize your face. This option is used if people take pictures of you and upload them to Google Photos, which automatically recognizes friends and family and creates albums. If you do not want people to do this, turn it off. I leave it, since I love it.
• Click "Manage what you share on YouTube." I disable everything so that people can not see my playlists or when I like a video or not.
• Finally, go here: https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-personalization. This allows you to disable the information that Google collects about how you use its services, such as YouTube search history, voice information, location, and more. I leave mine on because I'm still testing Google services and I like the recommendations, but you should turn them off if you're worried about privacy.

That's all. Once you have completed the above steps, you have done most of the management necessary to prevent Google from collecting some of the data that it can access while you use its services.