Nowadays, personal information is threatened just by using the Internet normally. Emotet, a virus that steals personal information with clever tricks, is rampant. The online advertising you see every day may also track your online behavior. How can I use the Internet safely and comfortably? I will teach you the key points six times.
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Users who have a Google account collect various histories each time they log in and use each Google service. For example, the history of “what keyword you searched for”, “what kind of video you watch often”, “what month and what day you went to where” may be saved in your account one by one (Figure 1）。
This is because Google improves the convenience of its services and displays advertisements that are highly relevant to users, but it is not very pleasant to understand their tastes and behavior patterns.
Google collects three items: “Web and app activity,” “Location history,” and “YouTube history.” If you’re curious about what information is recorded, check the “Data and Privacy” section on the account management screen (Figure 2). Here, many settings related to the user, such as the collection status and storage period of the three items mentioned above, are summarized. It’s rarely noticed, but basically two items other than the location history should be saved with the consent of the user when acquiring the account.
Figure 2 Open the Google account management screen from the URL on the left and select “Data and privacy” to check the information stored by Google. Often turned on except for “location history”
