How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct

&gt; <i>For those who don’t want Google to create a record of their location history at all, there’s a switch for that. On the My Activity page, click Activity controls and scroll to Location history and turn the switch to the off position.</i><p>Yes, that&#x27;s what I do. But then Google Maps on the phone nags you constantly that it should be on.<p>Removing the nagging would be an immense improvement and proof of commitment to privacy on Google&#x27;s part.

My concern about these deletion request is that you are totally at the will of the platforms, that they actually will delete your data. This already imply trust towards them. And if you have trust they handling data with responsibility, why would you need to ask for delete?

&quot;How to auto-delete your search history Most of Google’s new privacy controls are in a web tool called My Activity. (Here’s the URL: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;myactivity.google.com." rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;myactivity.google.com.</a>)<p>Once you get into the tool and click on Activity Controls, you will see an option called Web &amp; App Activity. Click Manage Activity and then the button under the calendar icon. Here, you can set your activity history on several Google products to automatically erase itself after three months or after 18 months. This data includes searches made on Google.com, voice requests made with Google Assistant, destinations that you looked up on Maps and searches in Google’s Play app store.&quot;

Weren&#x27;t a lot of people on Twitter complaining that this is basically insufficient? Most of the information about you that can be profitably mined to create &quot;insights&quot; about you expire in less than a month, these people claim. By having Google auto-delete them in three months, it could provide some peace of mind to you, but it doesn&#x27;t really affect Google&#x27;s ability to target you in ads.

Link is a little buried in the article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;myactivity.google.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;myactivity.google.com&#x2F;</a>

Only flaw I see with this and stuff like FB saying they &quot;deleted&quot; your account is:<p>&quot;It&#x27;s deleted&quot; is (or could be) another term for &quot;You can&#x27;t see it anymore, but it&#x27;s there somewhere&quot;<p>Haven&#x27;t gone into ToS, but regardless, there&#x27;s no way we can determine if it&#x27;s <i>really</i> gone.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;o87EK" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;o87EK</a>

Usually, as with turning off location history, I feel this only hurts the user, as I don&#x27;t believe any relevant parties won&#x27;t have access to the deleted entries if the need arises.<p>The only person who doesn&#x27;t have access to that data will be the subject the data originated from.

Does anyone have any insight on what actually happens to this data? Is it really deleted or just stored in a warehouse somewhere inaccessible to me but accessible to some snooping government or hacker?

I set this, even though I&#x27;ve blacklisted Google on Firefox. (I just use Chromium if I need to use Gmail). But, how can I stop Google collecting data on my phone? I was initially blocking Google because of censorship, but I can&#x27;t find any way to control my phone, and it&#x27;s feeling really personal now.

Three months is a hilarious joke. The value of analytics data decays steeply; they let you delete the stuff that&#x27;s not particularly valuable to <i>them</i>.<p>If Google actually cared about your privacy you&#x27;d be able to delete the info for shorter intervals, or even have it not stored at all.

This does not change Googles behavioral profile on you. In fact, it just adds another data point on your profile that implies that you don&#x27;t trust Google to protect you data.

A few months ago someone posted a tool that cleared this and old tweets as well, but I can’t remember the name.<p>I wish there was a tool that regularly nuked my Facebook history as well, from comments in random groups to likes across the site. I have no use for things I commented 10 years ago.

&gt; <i>...it will begin rolling out a new private mode for when you’re navigating to a destination with its Google Maps app, which could come in handy if you’re going somewhere you want to keep secret, like a therapist’s office.</i><p>There we go again, shaming mental health :(

Is there an automated way to get it to self-destruct sooner? Like every 12 or 24 hours?

the data will be deleted from the front end but it&#x27;ll still stay at google servers for like 2 to 3 years. So basically a useless thing to do.