Just wanted to share a recent jaw dropping experience with google. My sister in-law had been visiting about 2 months ago and signed into her you-tube account and/or google gmail and then did not log out when she left. With all the warnings floating around about google storing info I just started to wonder what info would be available. I was able to get her password for you-tube which also gets me signed into her google and gmail accounts. HOLY SHIT!!! It was ALL the google searches done anyone on her computer and MY COMPUTER stored for very easy viewing going back a long time!! Anyways without snooping around too much (and NOT in her emails) there was many searches done mostly by me (ie perb and related) that would have done major irreparable damage to my life if any of that came to light. I promptly cleared all search history and logged out. I will not be using google for any private searches in the future, and you may want to consider looking into this if you have a google account.
Caution with GOOGLE personal google searches
- Thread starter russian man
- Start date
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FYI you can turn this off in your own google profile/account
(but would still have to make sure no one remains logged in on your computer)
Search history and settings: Delete past searches
Your Google search history may be stored in your browser, the Google Toolbar or in your Google Web History. See instructions for deleting past searches from all of these locations by clicking the links below.
* Clear your browser search history
* Clear your Google Toolbar search history
* Clear your Google Web History
If you want to prevent Google from storing your search history in the future, learn how to turn off personalization.
Search history and settings: Turning off search history personalization
Google sometimes customizes your search results based on your past search activity on Google. This customization includes searches you've done and results you've clicked. Since personalized search treats signed-in and signed-out users differently, the instructions for turning off search history personalization are a little different in each case.
Signed in searches
To disable history-based search customizations while signed in, you'll need to remove Web History from your Google Account. You can also choose to remove individual items. Note that removing this service deletes all your old searches from Web History.
Signed out searches
If you aren't signed in to a Google Account, your search experience will be customized based on past search information linked to a cookie on your browser. To disable these types of customizations, follow these steps:
1. In the top right corner of the search results page, click Web History.
2. On the resulting page, click Disable customizations based on search activity.(Because this preference is stored in a cookie, it'll affect anyone else who uses the same browser and computer as you).
Or, if you'd rather just delete the current cookie storing searches from your browser and start fresh, clear your browser's cookies.
Note: If you've disabled search customizations, you'll need to disable it again after clearing your browser cookies; clearing your Google cookie turns on history-based customizations.
Lots of additional web history/privacy tips here and here.
