Is Google tracking you? To check and see if your location history is enabled, go to your Google Maps Timeline. It will tell you whether your location history is on or off and let you enable or pause it.

Even if you disable location history, according to Google itself, depending on your individual phone and app settings they might still collect and use location data to improve “your Google experience.” This murky level of transparency has people seeking alternative search engines.

Disabling your location history won’t remove your past history. If you want to do that, click the gear icon in the bottom right corner of your Timeline map and select Delete all Location History.

It’s no secret that Google knows a lot about you. Their business model is reliant on data collection. Information gathered from everything you do through google: through search, the use of maps, and much more.

Google has all of your search history stored up.

How to delete it: Go to Google’s My Activity page. You can see your Google Activity from today. Click on Delete Activity By in the left hand column and then select Search from the drop-down menu.

If you want to stop Google tracking your searches, head to the activity controls page and switch tracking for ‘Web & App Activity’ off. Or better yet a good first step would be to stop using google search.