Online privacy shouldn’t be such a burden. It’s dull and onerous to delete old, forgotten accounts and methodically work through privacy settings. But it’s worth it when data breaches continue to hit organisations.

1. Run a privacy checkup for your Google account

⏱️ How long does it take? Around 10 minutes to check settings for an existing account.

For many people, Google is the web – using Chrome to access Gmail, relying on Maps to get around, watching YouTube videos and so on. But Google is also one of the world’s largest online advertising companies, which is worth bearing in mind when it comes to protecting your privacy.

Setting up a new Google account

If you’re creating a new account, you’ll be offered an Express setup or a Manual one – choose the latter, as it walks you through the various privacy settings. That includes Web & App Activity, where Google collects data for personalisation.

Revisiting an existing Google account

If you already have a Google profile, log in, select your profile picture and head to Manage your Google Account. Choose Data & Privacy to see the available options.

Depending on your settings, you might see privacy suggestions available at the top of your screen. You can review the suggestions there if you’re short on time – or manually check your account using the instructions below.

Under History settings, click on Web & App Activity to disable Google’s personalisation across its own services. Entirely disable this service, or delete specific activity such as ad interactions, wider collection of data from Google-affiliated services, and the use of voice and audio activity.

From the Data and Privacy screen, you can also check the following:

  • Under Personalized ads, head to My Ad Centre to toggle the button to disable the use of your data to show ads specific to you. 
  • Click Search personalisation to turn off personalisation such as autocomplete and recommendations – although these handy tools may be worth keeping enabled as they can be real time savers.
Google privacy settings

While we’re talking privacy, consider enabling 2FA for your online accounts.

2. Try Google’s Password Manager

⏱️ How long does it take? Around 10-20 minutes to open the tool, sort through your saved passwords and update compromised ones.

If you’re already putting your trust in the Google ecosystem, it’s logical to also rely on the company’s wider safety tools. Its Password Manager (passwords.google) makes strong, unique passwords easier to use and warns if any are spotted in a data breach.

The tool will show you a list of stored passwords for your online accounts – shopping websites, social media accounts and gaming services, for example. Expanding one will display your username and password, plus associated URLs.

Visit the Checkup screen to see if Password Manager has identified any weak passwords, reused passwords or compromised passwords. Compromised passwords should be updated immediately. (See also: how to create secure passwords)