Google tracks every online activity of every individual. You wouldn’t even realize that the amount of your data Google collects. If you haven’t realized most of your activity is done on your android and google tracks even that.
But the good part is that google reveals everything it tracks about you. You can check the My Google Activity anytime for the specific email id. The irony is if you can see the activity then anyone can peek into your activity when you are logged in. So to protect your privacy google has added an extra layer of protection.
What is tracked in My Google Activity?
My google activity basically categorizes your data in three different verticles (Web & app activity, Location History, and YouTube History).
- Web & app activity: It includes Chrome history and activity from sites, apps, and devices that use Google services
- Location History: It saves where you go with your devices, even when you aren’t using a specific Google service, to give you personalized maps, recommendations based on places that you’ve visited, and more.
- YouTube History: It saves the YouTube videos that you watch and the things that you search for to give you better recommendations, remember where you left off, and more.
Well, this is a lot of data and can easily be misused if being tracked by someone malicious. You can also separately pause saving each activity as long as you want. By default, the data saved gets deleted within 3 months but can extend it also.
How to Password My Google Activity
By default the Google my activity won’t have any password protection. To add two extra layers of protection go to My Google Activity and then click on “Manage my Activity verifications”.
Also read: How to Delete Gmail account from Computer, Android & iOS devices
Then a prompt screen will open where you have to select “Require extra verification” and save it.
As soon as you press the save button the next will ask you to fill in your email password again to verify your identity.
Now your google my activity page will look like this. So whenever you want to access the activity then click on verify button and fill in the email password. So from now own every time my activity page needs email password verification.
Final Words
As per my recommendations, this is a must-have privacy setting that needs to be done y every individual. Given the amount of data Google my activity page shows is enormous which needs to be protected at any cost.