Ask HN: Did you turn off Google activity tracking? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Did you turn off Google activity tracking?

myactivity.google.com

58 pointsnittanymount52 comments

I actually really like it, particularly location history. For instance I find it fun to go back and look at past trips in detail and reminisce.

I can definitely see where someone wouldn't want that though

same, mine dates back to november 2009, I think it might be to the day it was introduced, through my HTC Dream/G1 phone

I had history back to 2012 and accidentally deleted it a couple years ago and I was very saddened at the loss of all those years of data. Every now and then I would look and see where I had been or just how many times I had visited local shops or friends' homes. Since then I have been trying to use Google backup and downloading it, but that feature has been very frustrating to deal with. Many times it fails to backup or fails to download the zipped file.

For location history I use https://gpslogger.app. It's open-source, can be found on F-Droid and has many settings.

does that have any off device capability? I see sending to url, etc, wondering if there is a preferred server app that makes office device backing up/displaying/etc automatic and easy.

Also a big fan. I think I've got the Google history from when it was first introduced plus data from GPS Logger (with some gaps). Does anyone know of a good tool to explore analyze GPS data like this? I can make a Tableau dashboard, but wondered if there was something better off the shelf.

Often it's if I have expenditure I can't recall. First stop location history to see where I was. Mostly solves it.

Google has announced on-device only encrypted back options.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24002693/google-maps-upd...

Yes, I turned it off a long time ago.

But I'm also not normally signed into a Google account, I don't use anything that automatically signs me into Google (not a browser nor any other program or device), I run aggressive Web tracker blocking, I try to use Tor Browser for sites that don't require logins, and my phone is GrapheneOS without any Google Play apps.

That's little more than the minimal, IMHO. Google and many other tech companies are still able to violate me, but the next tier of defense against them is too difficult.

Surprisingly enough, I actually _want_ mine turned on. I normally look through when I found a particular site and just can't remember what it was but vaguely remember the dates or some other information about them. I'm happy Google is even sharing these controls but I would assume anything that's deleted here is a soft delete on their system

I too like my every action and utterance being recorded by massive corporation with ties to intelligence just in case I have to go back and find my lost keys!

No, sometimes it accidentally turns off and I have to turn it on again.

I like having it on just like I like having Internet search history to look back and find something.

My memory kinda sucks and I travel a lot so sometimes I use it to place myself where I was 2 months ago. Whether it's to find a restaurant I walked by but forgot to save in maps, or to try to remember where I lost something yesterday etc etc

I also found out my last month of Google photos had location disabled from my phone. Again by accident. It really sucks because I liked being able to search via location to find photos. Or sometimes find a photo and share a venue or restaurant to friends.

Yes. I don't trust Google.

(Is the setting meaningfully respected? Who knows.)

I might like this feature if there were a way I could have true sovereignty over the data (ie. stored locally in a manner they cannot hoover back up with an app update, and which is captured by my own backup infrastructure).

Yes, except youtube history. Not sure the turning off actually does anything.

I do the same thing, but I find that youtube history is very unreliable when you go back more than a year or two and the UI / tools for digging through it are beyond terrible

It might just be an EU thing, but turning off youtube history is incredibly effective at fixing "the algorithm".

It refuses to show me an algorithmic home page entirely, the only option is the chronological subscriptions feed. Perfect!

Video suggestions in the sidebar are always (mostly) relevant to the video I'm currently watching.

The problem is if you turn of history and even browse while not logged in, they absolutely still apply the algorithm to your "fresh" cookie based ID. This is how I use YT, and I have my browser set to delete on browser close. So I see the "fresh" YT, but withing 2 video watches, the algo is already making itself visible

Again, might be an EU thing, but even my logged-out youtube sessions seem completely un-personalised (I likewise use sites in fresh sessions by default).

Opening youtube.com in a fresh, logged-out browser session gives me a blank home page, with this dialog:

> Your YouTube history is off

> You can turn on watch and search history at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you.

> To update your selection, turn on YouTube History and confirm your settings to accept the use of cookies and data

Can't you just go to the subscriptions page instead of the home page? That seems like such a trivial complaint. You can even bookmark it if you don't want an extra click.

It wasn't a complaint! I would rather they made subscriptions the default, but like you say, I navigate directly to the page I want so I'm unbothered.

I turn everything on and sign in everywhere. It's super useful to remember both what I searched for and where I've been.

I use Google stuff because of the tracking/personalization, like Calendar is integrated with Gmail, or Maps can show my contacts, or Search knows where I am, and YouTube makes OK (not great) recommendations based on my history.

I'd gladly pay them to handle all this for me (instead of ads), especially for search and maps.

I switched ON everything Google I can because it saved my bottom several times already.

Well, maybe not really saved my bottom but helped enormously to get some information about a place I was in, a payment or a web page.

When people tell me about my data being resold and whatnot I put my hands on my ears and I am not hearing you, la la la la! Truly a responsible behaviour but Google is making my life soooooo much easier.

Thanks for the reminder. I really strongly dislike how it tracks when I 'visit' my television, that kind of creeps me out a bit

this might not be a big deal, but it saves your internal server urls to their database too, this is not expected in some way...?

seems it was turned on by default for everyone on March 29th, 2022

https://www.adzapier.com/google-activity-tracking-now-on-by-...

Yes, i have.

No, i don't expect the to actually not track me.

A friend of mine had his phone stolen at a party. He had turned off all remote location services before, a choice he regretted after the theft. I don't know precisely which features he turned off, maybe there is separate controls. What can you turn off without losing the ability to locate your stolen phone?

You can for sure use Google Find My without location history enabled. But I'm pretty sure it won't save the "last known location" of the device and will instead need to query the device on demand (which won't work if the thief has turned off the device).

I've turned off web/app activities and don't use Google web search (directly). However, I keep YouTube and maps tracking (from time to time).

YouTube because this is one of the algorithms that provide good suggestions with minor work on my side.

Position because I can go back in time when I travel (I try to turn it off otherwise).

Nope, I like having a record of where I've been synced in the cloud. Very occasionally I'll use it to reconstruct some past events.

One time I forgot to clock in, and didn't know about the history yet, and when my boss asked my hoe long I thought I had worked I used by bus payment card logs to figure it out.

Apparently I keep YoutTube on? Though when they started blocking adblockers I stopped going to YT, but the past few times someone's sent me a YT link, it just worked, so maybe they backed off? I wish I could step away from Google like I did from Twitter, but I'm stuck with it. At least for now.

Nah. It's mildly useful to me to have all that recorded and accessible. Plus I think there's like a 60% chance that turning it off only turns off it being displayed to me and it's all still being recorded and stored anyways. "Don't be evil" is long gone.

Sadly, I have the same distrust of the off switch as well. It seems like it would be much easier to implement the yes/no at the user's UI as opposed to the core back end needing to make yes/no decisions which also means they have less revenue generating data. Also, much easier to implement the yes/no decision at export data to show regulators it is gone.

Yes, all off and several google domains blocked with noscript too.

I don't want anything to be automatically personalised, and Firefox already does a good job of keeping my browsing history & bookmarks.

Yes many years ago. The only annoyance I have is GMaps not remembering recent places. So you have to type in an address every time. Still outweighs being tracked all the time.

Yes but I have to check every so often to make sure its still off. I try to use Kagi for all things search and Fastmail for email/calendar.

Need to have an account to turn it off.

reading the comments, kind of interesting to see how people changing the way of thinking privacy over years....

remember years ago, when gmail started put on ad based on 'reading' the email content, it was a big thing, big discussion, haha, now, people accept these things... not exact the same thing tho.

Don't read too much into the comments you see here, it's not representative.

Staunch privacy supporters like myself often use very strong language to describe despicable companies like Google when asked questions about privacy and tracking like the one in this post and HN consistently removes all of those comments because in this world no one's fee fee's may ever be hurt, for any reason. Even if a company essentially permanently lives up your butt, like Google, that is still no reason to hurt people's fee fees.

agree, "it's not representative." guessing the same way :-)

I do not have a gougle account at all.

really? LOL

I don’t need one; why should I have one?

Yes, years ago. Why?

I turned it on.

I know I will get downvoted here but I like to keep everything enabled. The more Google knows about me, the more relevant the ads they can serve. I hope Google’s ads will one day be as relevant as the ads I see on Facebook and Instagram.

And if I ever get falsely accused of a crime, my Google location history, combined with my Google Photos’ metadata, could serve as my alibi.

agree, it helps google personalize the service content.

while, somehow, it is not expected to record all internal server names/urls. that is kind of private info, may contain something not supposed/expected to be outside in some way... did not pay attention to /realize this before, so...

…unless you get falsely accused of a crime because of your location history. ;)

> And if I ever get falsely accused of a crime, my Google location history, combined with my Google Photos’ metadata, could serve as my alibi.

Or the next government change what constitutes a crime and use the information as evidence.

Lets be honest here...

These settings are whether Google *shows* them to you. Google already collects all this data. And knowing what we know about Google, it's laughable that they'd delete all the data they captured.

So, yeah, these settings just toggle whether YOU see it.

And I value having my data shown to me when I ask, so they're on.

This ^. It's impossible to knowingly delete all the data. I wouldn't expect an ad company to delete valuable data so I'd expect they just hide it from you.

good point, very likely, these records are not deleted at all :-)

Nope. I like having it on. Seeing the yearly review in Google Maps is amazing.

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