Google’s Transparency Feature, 'My Activity,' Gives You Control Over Your Privacy

If you don't know it yet, Google watches every move you make on the web when you use its apps and services. While you were in the dark about what Google knows about you before, now you can know-and edit-with its new privacy tool, My Activity.

Your Google accounts (from Gmail to YouTube) can get you access to the privacy tool at myaccount.google.com where you can customize your privacy and security options, and shows you your activities, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In the "Go to my activity" link, you will find websites you've been to, word searches you did in the Google search engine and Google Play app store, places you've searched for in Google Maps and even videos you've been watching on YouTube. You can even look in the search box for any specific things you want to know you've done, and filter them by date or by which Google product you've accessed them from, like Chrome and YouTube.

Once you've found what you're looking for and you decide that you don't want the world to know what you've been doing surfing those sites, you can easily delete them using the three dot-button that will bring down a menu.

According to Google, once you have deleted an event in your timeline, Google will no longer consider those data when they profile you.

While the new tool may be helpful, it also has its limitations. It can only show the data in the device you were using at the time. To see the data from all your google-dependent devices, you will have to allow google to combine this data with other data that the company keeps separate-which means that the advertising privacy setting will also include personal interactions in Gmail, Google Calendar and other private apps.

Allowing Google access to those data will mean that any information you put in them will finally allow the company to use them to target ads at you that they did not previously do. While the company is already giving you personalized ads, not agreeing to opt in to their advertising privacy setting will still keep Google from factoring such information like when you add a trip in your calendar.

Remember that when you opt to allow Google into your email and other personal accounts, you can't know exactly what Google is logging when its reading through your emails. So it's up to you whether you want to opt in or not, and Google lets you decide by clicking on the "Manage ads settings" under Personal Info & Privacy in the My Account Website.

Finally, you can "pause" Google's data collection by going to "Privacy Check-up" and then to "Activity Controls." It's a neat trick if you plan on entering private information that you don't want to share with anyone else.