What does Google know about you? Here's what to check

My Activity, found at myactivity.google.com when signed into your Google account, is the most direct view into what Google has recorded about your use of its services. It shows a scrollable timeline of searches, YouTube videos watched, and activity from other Google apps you use, each with a timestamp (Google, checked October 2026).

From this page you can delete individual items, delete activity from a specific time range, or set up auto-delete so activity older than a chosen period (such as 3, 18, or 36 months) is removed automatically going forward. You can also pause the underlying setting — called Web & App Activity — if you'd rather Google stop saving this going forward entirely.

It's worth noting that turning this off can affect features that rely on it, like personalized search suggestions or your YouTube recommendations, which may become less tailored to your habits.

If you've ever enabled Location History, Google can build a Timeline of places your signed-in devices have been, based on GPS and other location signals. This feature has shifted over the past couple of years toward storing this data primarily on your device rather than Google's servers by default for new users, but it's worth checking your own account's current setting rather than assuming (Google, checked October 2026).

You can view, edit, or delete your Timeline, turn off future location tracking for your account, and set auto-delete periods, all from your Google account's location settings. If you use Google Maps features like traffic predictions based on your commute or "your places" suggestions, turning this off will reduce how personalized those features feel.

It's a common mix-up: turning off ad personalization does not stop Google from collecting your activity, and turning off activity tracking is a separate setting from ad personalization. They control different things. Ad personalization determines whether your activity and interests are used to choose which ads you see; you'll still see ads either way, just less tailored to you if you turn it off.

This setting lives in your Google account's "Ads" or "Data & Privacy" section, where you can also see the specific interest categories Google has inferred about you and remove ones that don't apply or that you'd rather not have influence your ads.

Your Google account's "Data & Privacy" page is the central hub for most of this, and a short visit there covers the majority of what's worth checking.

Google Takeout, at takeout.google.com, lets you export a copy of your data from across Google's services — Gmail, Photos, Drive, Calendar, and more — into downloadable files (Google, checked October 2026). It's useful if you want a personal backup, are considering switching to a different email or photo service, or simply want to see the full scope of what's stored in your account.

You can choose specific services to include rather than exporting everything, and large exports (especially Photos) can take a while to prepare and may be split into multiple files.

Reducing what Google tracks generally comes with a reduction in personalization — less accurate search suggestions, less tailored YouTube recommendations, and ads that are less relevant to you but not fewer in number. For most people this is a reasonable trade for more privacy, but it's worth knowing going in rather than being surprised afterward.

None of these settings require technical expertise to change, and all of them can be adjusted back if you decide you preferred how things worked before. A reasonable approach is to review each setting once, decide what you're comfortable with, and revisit it occasionally rather than trying to lock everything down permanently in one sitting.