Wizer Free Security Awareness Blog

What Google Knows About Me

Written by Gabriel Friedlander | May 19, 2022 9:07:38 PM

Wanna have a good scare. Go to Takeout.google.com to find out what Google knows about you. You can export all this data and save it locally. However, remember that if someone hacked your account, they could also export it. There are about 50 different type of activities, this is just a sample: 

Browsing History
Location History
YouTube History
Google Meet Recording
Hangout
Calendar
Contacts
Drive
Shopping
Photos
Fit
And much much moreā€¦

 

As you can see it may take time to export all of that info

 

So what can you do about this?

You can go to https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-privacy and start toggling off anything you don't want Google to share.

And while you are there, go to https://myaccount.google.com/security and turn on "2-step verification". This will protect your account if someone for example phished you and got hold of your password. Now, because they won't have the code sent to your phone, the password would not be enough to take over your account.  Not convinced? Check How Multi Factor Authentication Can Save You

Lastly, scroll up a little and look at the "Recent Security Activity". Is there any activity you don't recognize? Like someone logged in from a location you don't recognize, ect. Now, Do this every so often.. It's good to keep tabs on what's going on with your account to keep bad people out.