Note: This is a quick and dirty guide. We’ll be improving it a smidge over the up-coming days, to make it easier to understand!
First, log into your google account. You should be able to do that from just about any page with the word ‘google’ in it, including plain old google.com. If you want to make absolutely sure you get there, though, go to www.google.com/accounts
Once you are logged in, go to where your name will be listed, in the upper right hand corner of the screen, in a dark bar. Click on your name, and in the menu that comes down, click on ‘Privacy’.
There’s a lot of useful stuff right there, but to get to the real meat we are going to dig down a little lower. Scroll all the way down and click on ‘Privacy Center’
There’s a bunch of information on that screen that’s really worth reading, but on the right, the first link, Privacy Tools is where the juicy filling is. Clicking on that link brings you a page where you can see information and adjust settings for each of googles services. It’s quite a few, actually.
One of the most useful opt outs comes to what type of information Google collects about you. Click on ‘Ads Preference Manager’ . It’ll probably ask you to log in again, but it might not. Then, click on ‘opt out’ to the left. THEN – yes, this is kind of like going down the rabbit hole – click on ‘Opt Out’ Again. This opts you out of ads in google searches and gmail.
But, you can also click on ‘Ads on the Web’ link that’s there to the left. Under Ads On the Web, you can view profile information about who google thinks you are. Your gender, your age – statistics you can edit, by the way – and the various ad categories that google tracks you on. You can also just click the ‘Opt out’ button on that screen. When you opt out, Google disables this cookie and no longer associates interest and demographic categories with your browser.
Also, many browsers have a privacy mode that eliminates the cookie you get from a website when you close the browser, meaning information won’t be saved from search to search.