Clearing Your Google History

[ztonk]

If you have a Gmail hobby account, you might want to take this opportunity to have your web history deleted before Google's new privacy rules take effect:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...y-takes-effect

z

[Guest122213]

Thanks for the tip!

[telos]

Thank you for the heads up!!

[BigTee]

very key and important update was added to that page:

[UPDATE 2/22/2012]: Note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement. With Web History enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented. If you want to do more to reduce the records Google keeps, the advice in EFF's Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy white paper remains relevant.
If you have several Google accounts, you will need to do this for each of them.

[Kanyon]

You should never hobby with the same browser you use for real life webmail, browsing, or social networking.

[Insano]

thanks for the heads up. i just tried that link and from what i can tell, my history has never been turned on. i dont see the buttons found in that screen cap for removing history. just a button to turn it on, which im not about to do.

[mm175d]

This is important enough a message that I am going to respond, just to give it a bump. Thanks for sharing the information!

[Vyt]

Note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement.

There used to be a search engine front-end called "Scroogle" that offered secure private searching but that shut down earlier this year. This article lists alternatives:

http://searchengineland.com/scroogle...arching-112275

For truly fingerprint-free searching/web browsing in general:

- Use an anonymous proxy server (http://proxy.org/). This directs all your web traffic through a different server in another physical location, so that anyone observing your traffic sees all traffic going to the "proxy server", and from that server to your destination so that servers that you visit cannot see where you are located. This is, for example, how web users in China and other repressive states defeat web censoring.
- For sensitive web browsing use a non-standard web browser with cookies set to off in the preferences (optionally using Chrome or Safari for "Private Browsing" -- Safari for Windows is an especially good choice as it is not a popular browser)
- Do not log into any Google Accounts when using Google search