How to avoid being found by Google apps?

Two of today's biggest concerns are privacy and security in the virtual realm and where they intersect with off-screen life and avoid being located by Google apps. If you have an Android smartphone or use Google apps on your iPhone, your GPS is being monitored and data sent to the company.

With that in mind, we wrote an article about how to perform a security checkup on your Google account and now we will instruct the user not only not to be found by Google satellites, but also to increase their overall online privacy and prevent their data from being compromised. so easily shared.

1. How to disable Google app tracking

Let's start with the simplest, but not by far the least important part, which is how to avoid being found by Google apps.

One thing you probably have noticed is that the ads you receive on your phone, whether on Chrome, Facebook or wherever, are for places near you. This is because all of your location data is shared with various marketing companies.

If you don't like it, it's simple enough to stop Google from tracking you. To do this on Android, go to "Settings"roll up "Google", click this option, click “Manage your Google Account”, go to the tab “Data and customization ”, click in “Web & App Activity” and finally deactivate.

This will stop your site searches and activities from being saved; This is necessary because Google uses this information to improve future searches based on history, including the location of buildings or businesses you searched for.

The second part is to follow the previous steps until you get to “Data and personalization” again, click “Location History” and then disable this option as well. This will prevent Google from keeping track of places you've visited and routes you've taken.

You can also disable this via iPhones, iPads, and computers. To do so, simply go to the activity controls page and first turn off the “Web & App Activity”, scroll down and also turn off the “Location History”.

If the link isn't working, open Google in your browser, click your account image in the upper right corner, click “Manage your Google Account” and follow the same steps to do for the Android smartphone.

2. How to delete data that is already stored

If you want to maximize your privacy, just avoiding being found by Google apps is not enough, after all, Google had already collected a lot of your information and stored it in your database.

Unfortunately, removing old data from the business database doesn't have a native Android option and requires the user to go to Google's activity tracking page; In it, you'll find a detailed list of everything you've searched, watched, and visited in Google apps.

Now that you are on the site, you can remove all data for a specific day, surveys or whatever you want. On the left side of the page you have the option “Delete activity by”; clicking it opens a menu offering to delete last hour, last 24 hour, custom interval, or all activity.

In addition, you can still set to automatically delete data by clicking “Activity Controls” is at “Web & App Activity” clicking on “Manage History”. You will go to a page where you have the option to “Select to automatically delete”, with the options to delete manually at 18 months or 3 months.

Finally, it is recommended that the user also remove all location history saved in Google Maps. To do this from your smartphone, open the app. Maps, open the 3 line menu, click “Your timeline”, click on the 3 dots and there you can “Delete day”, but not all data.

Through the browser, you must go to the timeline page and, if you are not signed in to your account, log in. Then click on gear in the bottom right corner of the screen and there you can delete all location history You can also set your browsing history to be deleted every 3 or 18 months.

3. Setting Other Privacy Options

You can decrease the accuracy of your smartphone's GPS so apps that depend on your smartphone keep working, but you can also avoid being found by Google apps. To do this, go to "Settings", in "Google", “Account Services”, "Location" and on this screen change the "Mode" for “Device Only”.

On iOS, go to "Settings", "Privacy" and “Location services”. Then you can enable or disable GPS and also change the behavior for each individual app. You can select which app to always ask for, can access location when in use, never be able to access or always allow.

Also, when you talk to a smart speaker like Google Home – look at our comparison of it with Apple HomePod – or even Google Assistant, the company keeps recordings of their voice and what they said, saying that use to improve speech recognition and to understand you better.

If you want to disable this, go to the data control page, scroll down and disable the “Voice and audio recordings” and delete the recordings already made.

Another thing that can be turned off on this same screen is the so-called ad personalization, which recommends what to buy and which sites to visit based on your past searches and sites you visit at the cost of your privacy.

So what did you think of our privacy tips and how to avoid being found by Google apps?

We hope this article was helpful to you and helped you stay a little safer online; Also check out these apps for added security. If you have any other tips we forgot, leave it in the comments to add to the list. See also more ways your smartphone is violating your privacy.