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Today is Your Last Chance to Remove your Search History from Google's New Policy

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mouser:
From ITWorld:

Google announced in January it would unify most of its services under a single privacy policy and a single set of data-gathering tools that will arrange all Google's useful data on each of its customers in an efficient database, from which it is much simpler to sell that customer as a commodity to advertisers looking for specific patterns of behavior.

... if you're cautious at all about the amount of information Google has about you, uncertain at all how little evil Google will do with all the consolidated information or just a little woogy about anyone having big chunks of surveillance on you with a yen to sell it: go erase your Google history now.

...

Tomorrow, 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...

The history you have to delete is on Google.com. When you're signed in, Google keeps track of where you're going and what you're looking at, and stores that history on its server files.

Today only you can still delete that data, by following the instructions provided by EFF.

--- End quote ---


Step by step guide to clearing your search history via the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation): here.

tranglos:
Nice, thanks!

Though browsing my old search history (almost 18k entries) was a bit like looking at old family albums. Recalling the stuff I was doing or thinking of doing at the time, all the thoughts that came to naught, and a few that didn't. Could even be useful. I'd like a feature like that. On my own da*n system.

Eóin:
I don't fully get this "last day" thing. As I understood it's the last day before Google combine all you data, but I've hadn't before heard that after this you can no longer delete anything.

I guess after today it'd be nigh impossible to delete just your search history without affecting other Google services you avail of. Is that what people mean by "last day"?

mouser:
I don't think I can answer that definitively, and I don't want to pass on misinformation -- but the impression I got was that tomorrow they are going to merge all search history they have on you so far, into their private opaque storage of your habits -- and that you may not ever be able to undo that or clear that.  You may be able to clear your web search history after tomorrow from some separate standalone list, but your prior search history from earlier may be walled off from you and kept permanently and inaccessible to you.  Again I don't know for sure but that's the impression I got.  Maybe someone else can help clarify.

Josh:
And....?

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