It’s no secret that Google tracks a lot of data about you, from the websites you visit to the videos you watch, the things you’ve searched for, and the places you have visited. Scrubbing this data from your Google account has required you to manually dig into your settings each time. That’s changing soon.
In the next few weeks, Google will be rolling out a feature to users around the world that will let them set this information to be deleted automatically every three or 18 months.
"We work to keep your data private and secure, and we’ve heard your feedback that we need to provide simpler ways for you to manage or delete it," Google said in a blog post published Wednesday.
For now, these controls are only coming to your location history and web and app activity, but it’s likely that they’ll come to more of your data history at some point.
Scrubbing this information from your Google account will make using Google services slightly less useful. After all, Google uses the data it collects about you to personalize its services by recommending restaurants, movies, music; adding appointments to your calendar; telling you whether it’s going to rain in your city; and, of course, serving you ads.
On the flip side, being able to get a giant corporation that guzzles all of your data to delete it periodically is a definite plus for privacy.