The Internet has revolutionized every field of life and has made the world a global village by shrinking the distances. However, privacy concerns have also increased due to the presence of personal data on the internet. Google servers store your every search and also save cross-link information from YouTube and other channels. Your location, interests, and hobbies, age, and even chats are being recorded and we can say that Google knows a lot about you.
Basically, it tries to improve their services by providing you relevant and local information and you may have also noticed that once you search something on Google you start getting related ads on Google as well as on other sites. Here in the article, we are going to share different ways to protect your privacy on Google Chrome or on any browser if you don’t want to disclose everything personal about you to Google.
Check Your Privacy Rights
“Google Privacy Center” has a complete privacy detail about its each and every product. All Google policies are mentioned in ‘Google Search Privacy’ while ‘Google Privacy Tips’ are also useful in this regard. Though, you may find it difficult to understand terms and conditions but a little help can prove very useful in most of the cases. To can set privacy as per your requirement as Google Privacy Channel provides you complete guidance in the form of small YouTube videos about your privacy settings.
Turn Off Location History
Location History feature works like a spy and keeps a record of your all movement. Whatever you do and wherever you go, it keeps an eye on you and tracks you with the help of your location. No doubt, it’s useful feature when you lose your cell phone and need track the location of the thief but it’s a real headache when it comes to privacy. Turn your Location History off. First of all, select your account page and click on My Account option. The next step is the selection of Personal Information and Privacy and selects My Activity and Activity Controls in sub-options. Furthermore, click on Manage Activity option and turn it off by clicking on the blue slider.
Clear Cookies Automatically
Most of the people don’t know about the functions of cookies and never bother to change their settings. Basically, cookies are responsible for creating files of your web interests and they transfer it to other shopping websites like Amazon and eBay. On the basis of these files, shopping websites send you recommendations and ads on your homepage. If you are deeply concerned about your privacy then set cookies setting in such a way that cookies history clears out whenever you close your browser. To do this, Select the menu option of Chrome and then click on the settings. Go to advanced settings and choose content settings option. Here you will find Cookies option and under this option, you have to click on “Keep local data only until you quit your browser”. This will clear your cookies automatically and will not save anything about your webs searches.
Protect Your Content
Most of the default settings of Google are public like your pictures and posts. You are supposed to set privacy settings according to your needs by selecting unlisted or private options. Similarly, “off the record” option doesn’t save your personal messages and prevent it sharing with other websites. Likewise, there is an option of Google Latitude that tracks your location but you can prevent it from saving location history on selecting the right checkbox. However, it will only save your last location if the GPS tracker is on.
Add SLL to Gmail
The default encryption of Gmail is SLL that turns off while you check your emails in order to ensure the optimal speed of your browser. You can select encrypt your emails without slowing down the performance of Gmail. This option is available in Settings of Gmail that is present in General tab option. Go to browser connection settings and click on the “Always use https” option.
Switch to Non-Tracking Search Engine
It’s not necessary to use Google Search Page all the time because it’s a tracking search engine. Rather, use non tracking search engine which run Google searches by applying proxy without bringing it into the knowledge of Google. Don’t forget to click on “By Proxy” option every time to prevent saving data from your browser.
Apart from the above-mentioned tips, turning off suggestion feature and turning off web history are there are some other useful ways to keep your data secure. Keep visiting Google Privacy Checkup and never open malicious files or websites on your personal computer. Malicious entities enter in your browsers silently and keep transferring the data to other websites. Install a good antivirus and always download files from trusted websites and never click on random ads.
