How to Manage Your Google Privacy Settings

A privacy policy is meant to be a contract between you and a company—big tech companies in particular—that ensures these companies are keeping your data safe. One company that has an enormous amount of your data, from email and photos to videos to documents, is Google.

- ERIC GRIFFITH

A privacy policy is meant to be a contract between you and a company—big tech companies in particular—that ensures these companies are keeping your data safe. One company that has an enormous amount of your data, from email and photos to videos to documents, is Google.

The Google Privacy Policy has been “updated” 37 times since its inception in 1999; updates typically happen three or four times a year. To its credit, Google makes all the changes in the policy pretty obvious and provides an archive of all previous policies.

It can and will change to suit Google, or to suit new laws and regulations Google has to follow. For example, in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) completely changed how big companies handle customer data. Even though it’s an EU regulation, the GDPR touched any company with personally identifiable info (PII) on customers there. That’s definitely Google.

GDPR doesn’t necessarily help those of us in the United States, but there are ways to take control of what Google has on you. That means mastering your Google My Account dashboard.

CONTROLLING YOUR GOOGLE PRIVACY

My Account is meant to be a one-stop spot to take control of your privacy and security when it comes to this monolithic company. Rather than visiting settings for every individual Google service—Gmail, Google Drive, Android phones, the Chrome browser(s), YouTube, and a hundred others—you change global settings here. Mostly.

Go to My Account and do two things right away: a Security Checkup and a Privacy Checkup.