Comments on: HOWTO turn off Google's search-history logging and erase your stored history

By: Martijn Boersma

Martijn Boersma — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:10:00 +0000

Mine was off too. I love living in this information age, but the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement is simply worrying.

By: A Nonny Moose

A Nonny Moose — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:12:00 +0000

I don’t use gmail. Or rather, I have a gmail account that I never use and consciously log out of on the very rare occasions that I log into it. Firefox can save my browsing history forever and sync it across installs, if I wish it to do so. I don’t know why I’d want to do that, though. I clear it every once in a while when I get a wild hair up my arse. If I encounter something I think I might want to see again, I bookmark it. I sync my bookmarks across all my FF installs.

By: Sam Pourasghar

Sam Pourasghar — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:20:00 +0000

It’s probably a good thing that we are having our details amassed by computers. When the world ends and all that is left is a large, clever and very lonely computer, a vast simluation (like the Matrix) will run and it will be inhabited by Sims that represent our personalities based on our recorded online activity. Our decisions will shape the brains of our virtual twins, digital doppelgangers that believe that they are real (and indeed the real us) although we actually died long ago. If you just go online for porn and that is the only side Google or Facebook or whatever sees, your future digital self will be a sex crazed maniac (even if you’re not really one in real life). Perhaps this has already happened.

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:57:00 +0000

You’re not the only one. I not only log off, I delete the tab before moving on to whatever else, just as I do for any site that has my financial info.

By: Cynical

Cynical — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:21:00 +0000

Yo dawg! We heard you like snooping, so we put some snooping in your snooping so you can see who’s snooping on you while you’re being snooped!

By: noah django

noah django — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:22:00 +0000

wait, what? you’re saying that if I don’t enable it then disable it now, after the 1st, google will enable it by default?

aw, eff it, may as well just go through the motions, eh?

By: SoItBegins

SoItBegins — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 04:53:00 +0000

There is an app. It’s called ‘your browser’. :)

Firefox normally stores 6 months of history, but if you want more, you can add to the browser.history_expire_days.mirror setting in about:config.

By: solstone

solstone — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:39:00 +0000

Also pretty cool. Thanks!

By: lavardera

lavardera — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:43:00 +0000

Same here. Mine is off. But google ads still target my browsing history.

For instance, after watching die antwoord’s last video, out of curiosity I googled the black-out contact lenses used in the video. The vendor whose site I visited appeared in google ads for a few days following.

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0000

I doubt you can keep gmail and dump everything else.
I recently went to self-hosted mail and pulled everything from gmail. I can’t get them to give up the data that they’ve already seen, but I don’t have to continue letting them get more.
I give up a little convenience, but not that much. I leave a few weeks worth on my server at a time and can access it via SquirrelMail. Older stuff I have to go to my local client for (or the copy on the encrypted thumb drive on my key ring)

By: scatterfingers

scatterfingers — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:09:00 +0000

Google will track what I do either way. With web history turned on, at least I can see what I’ve done.

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:07:00 +0000

I just discovered Ghostery a couple of weeks ago. It’s incredibly excellent. Everyone, go get it. If you set it to block everything as I did, you will have to selectively unblock a few things to get things like this comment section to work, but you can leave most things blocked.
It’s educational to watch the Ghostery icon while surfing. It’s not unusual to see a single web page tracking you via a dozen different analytics, web ad placement systems, stats gatherers, etc.

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:02:00 +0000

Then Microsoft can have your info instead.
Try DuckDuckGo.com

By: KBert

KBert — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:19:00 +0000

OK, forgive my ignorance; though I wouldn’t put it past them…

By: Sean O'Sullivan

Sean O'Sullivan — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Yeah I just checked this and mine’s been turned off for a long time, yet they still manage to tailor my information for their ad partners. Very odd.

By: BeaverBeaver

BeaverBeaver — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:05:00 +0000

I don’t have the stickwithitness to maintain that. I had a laptop, desktop, and 3 work machines… one in each OS flavor. Ironically… I’m actually looking into deleting my whole google account and starting fresh. The google dash scares me… I just want it all gone save gmail…

By: Palomino

Palomino — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:01:00 +0000

You don’t need to do step one.

Try this.

1. Go to www.google.com/history and log in to your account
2. Select Remove all Web History. You will get this message:

Remove all Web History for ly*******@gmail.com Are you sure you want to clear your entire web history? Your web history will also be paused.

3. Select O.K.

Google does make one interesting point. If someone else is using your account, your web history is a good way to find out.

By: Ellyn O'Toole

Ellyn O'Toole — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:50:00 +0000

The link doesn’t work. Can you make another? Your diary made me really nervous.

By: .

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:50:00 +0000

Could be. I am rarely ever logged in when I search, and I pretty much only access gmail through thunderbird. Also Gmail is only used for account signups and throw away use. Nothing of actual value goes through there.

By: taraine1970

taraine1970 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:47:00 +0000

Did we break eff.org? I keep getting a server timeout error when opening the article.

By: .

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:47:00 +0000

I just checked and saw that at least on Firefox, your local history goes back quite a ways. Mine was to November 2010 and the first entry was firefox update.

By: BeaverBeaver

BeaverBeaver — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:45:00 +0000

You have a firefox history that goes back to 2007ish, from every computer you’ve logged in to gmail on and searched with?

By: .

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:43:00 +0000

I just checked. Firefox still lets you selectively block cookies. Under options,privacy, and in history. Where it says Firefox will: select use custom settings for history. I have Accept cookies from sites and Accept third-party cookies checked, but have Keep until set to ask me every time. That gives me a dialog for anything that I haven’t visited or allowed explicitly before. Most sites I set to session only, if they actually need a cookie to function. Most are deny.

Lack of cool cookie handing is one major reason I won’t use other browsers unless I have to.

By: yosemite

yosemite — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Huh. I suspect I’m in the minority as someone who immediately logs off their Google account before using Google search. I only stay logged in while using Gmail–for all other internet activity, I’m always logged off.

By: A Nonny Moose

A Nonny Moose — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Firefox saves my history, I don’t need websites like google to keep a backup.

By: A Nonny Moose

A Nonny Moose — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:36:00 +0000

Try the Ghostery add-on for Firefox. It allows you to block all sorts of trackers on a one-by-one basis.

By: KBert

KBert — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:32:00 +0000

Seriously, there’s not an app that would allow us to retain our browsing history without Google scraping it? Or am I mistaken as to what the issue is? Are we talking about search terms exclusively, or also about what links we follow?
Like BeaverBeaver, I often resort to my history to access finds I didn’t, for whatever reason, feel the need to bookmark at the time. What’s a poor soul to do, oh my!

By: Logolepsy

Logolepsy — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:26:00 +0000

Same here. Can somebody please confirm that it possible to disable history somewhere else, maybe in the gmail profile or something… I’m pretty sure that I would have turn something like this off when I first registered years ago and that’s why it is not enabled right now.

By: Hakuin

Hakuin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:19:00 +0000

how much is a list of those who turned off their histories worth?

By: Oakley Boren

Oakley Boren — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:01:00 +0000

Me too. I was advised to turn it on, remove all, and turn it off again like Chenille just did. Counter-intuitive and ridiculous. But I guess that’s how you’ll have to do it.