Google collects and remembers information about your activity, including your web, search, and location history. Google now automatically deletes the history of new users after 18 months, but it will remember the history forever if you previously enabled this feature with the default options.
As an existing user, in order for Google to delete your data after 18 months, you will have to enter your activity settings and change this option. You can also tell Google to automatically delete the activity after three months or to stop collecting the activity entirely.
To find these options, go to the Activity Controls page and sign in with your Google account if you are not already signed in. Click the “Automatically remove” option under Web and app activity.
Select when you want to delete data, after 18 months or 3 months. Click “Next” and confirm to continue.
Please note: Google uses this history to personalize your experience, including web search results and recommendations. Deleting it will make your Google experience less “personalized”.
Scroll down the page and repeat this process for other types of data that you want to automatically delete, including Location History and YouTube History.
You can also disable (“pause”) activity history collection by clicking the slider to the right of a data type. If it is blue, it is enabled. If it is dimmed, it is disabled.
If the “Automatically delete” option for a history data type is grayed out, it is because you have stopped (disabled) the collection of that data.
You can also go to the My Activity page and use the “Delete activity by” option on the left sidebar to manually delete various types of data stored in your Google account.
Be sure to repeat this process for every Google account you use.
RELATED: Google is enabling automatic deletion of history by default for new users
