Our smartphones hold a wealth of personal data, making privacy settings more important than ever. If you are concerned about your device tracking your movements, listening to your communications, or even serving you targeted ads (related to what you spoke about), here are some tips to prevent your data from being leaked to Google. Here are 3 major settings that you should disable to keep your data private and secure.
Disable voice and audio activity in Google App
You must be unaware but Google records your voice and audio interactions to enhance your experience while using your handset, this could further be called the breaching of privacy, and you could stop your device from listening to anything or everything.
Here’s how to disable it:
- Open Google on your smartphone
- Click on Profile in the upper-right corner- where you will see a display picture of yours.
- There, go to Data and Privacy.
- There, tap on Web and App Activity.
- Then tap on Voice and Audio Activity and uncheck it.
By doing this, you will stop Google from recording your voice searches and audio interactions, reducing data collected from your device.
Turn off personalised Ads in ‘My Ad Centre’
Google has served personalised ads based on your preferences, searches and app usage. In case you like to see fewer targeted ads, you could opt out by following these steps:
- In the Google App on your smartphone, navigate to My Ad Centre.
- Toggle off Personalised Ads.
Disabling personalised ads will help you from using your activity to tailor advertisements, and make your browsing experience more private.
Stop location tracking on Google Maps.
Location tracking is a useful tool to navigate and for recommendations, which will enable Google to monitor your movements. To prevent this, here are the things you need to follow to turn off Location History:
- Open Google Maps
- There, tap on your Profile Icon in the top right.
- Select Your Data in Maps.
- Under Location History, disable the setting.
Turning off the location history will not let Google retain a timeline of your locations, which will give you additional privacy.
Take control of your data and privacy
The above setting could help you limit the amount of data Google collects from your personal life- from location to communication. By doing these, you could keep your activities and movements private.
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