My google activity history, youtube search/watch history, and location history are all completely empty because I've disabled all of it. I would recommend going through the privacy checkup[0] to control what does and doesn't get saved.
For example, voice search history you can enable or disable, if you enable it, you can see and listen to all your queries and delete them if you so choose. If you disable the history, Google still stores recordings of your voice and uses it to "improve their service", they just associate it with an anonymous identifier. The downside here, of course, is that you can't delete the copies of your voice Google is now saving despite your desire for them not to keep your history.
(I am having a hard time finding exactly where Google currently states this, but I have a high level of confidence this is how it works, as officially stated by Google, for voice activity.)
USA Today takes it a step further, and claims that "deleting" your voice activity merely converts it to the anonymous identifier, that Google keeps it either way: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/03/02/how-voic...
The better Google help article is this one, but it merely states changing the setting determines whether or not the audio activity is "saved to your account": https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6030020
I recall Google's articles being clearer on this point before, either I'm not looking in the right place or they may have obfuscated it.
1. collecting data and hiding it during times it was paused
2. checking if data collection is paused during collection time and keeping it/throwing it away
Option (2) is the easiest and most foolproof. For (1), all it takes is a single tiny bug in any code that handles your data history and their whole privacy stance is shot.
That doesn't seem any easier; as hiding is harder than checking a bit and discarding at collection time.
"For (1), all it takes is a single tiny bug in any code that handles your data history and their whole privacy stance is shot."
That doesn't sound foolproof at all.
Checking a bit and discarding at collection time is the easiest. You need to ensure data collection is aware of this setting, and anything that manipulates this data doesn't need to care whether or not some data is "hidden" or not.
> That doesn't sound foolproof at all.
Right - If you go the route of collecting all data and hiding it later then all tools that interoperate with customer data need to make sure they don't accidentally expose "paused" data back to the customer.
Given two choices of throwing away data at collection time, or forever in the future trying to hide data from the customer, it seems simpler to throw away data at collection time.