How to Delete Past Digital Traces from Google
Foto: Google (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)Illustration. Check out how to delete personal data from Google. (iStockphoto/michal-rojek)
-- Google stores the past data of everyone who has ever entered its search index, including the bad stuff. Can we request the removal of legacy personal data from all of the US tech giant's services?
Users' personal data and all their activities are remained stored from the time they start using Google services, including the Google search engine to YouTube. Companies use it including for targeted advertising purposes (targeted advertising), namely offering products that suit the habits of internet users.
Beyond search activity, in many cases, personal data in the form of a person's past disgrace is revealed when Googling certain keywords. This can take the form of distributing personal photos without permission to pornographic videos.
Can all of that be removed for the sake of a calmer life?
Eliminating digital traces is part of a person's right to be forgotten. This is a person's right to demand the deletion or revision of information relating to him/her that is inappropriate or no longer relevant in the electronic system.
Indonesia already has regulations in the Information and Electronic Transactions (ITE) Law and the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Law. "Every Electronic System Operator is obliged to delete irrelevant Electronic Information and/or Electronic Documents under its control at the request of the person concerned based on a court order," reads Article 26 paragraph (3) of the ITE Law.
"Personal Data Subjects have the right to end processing, delete and/or destroy personal data about themselves in accordance with statutory provisions," according to Article 8 of the PDP Law. Because all technology companies, which are officially registered, must follow the rules, Google also provides a way to erase this past.
Google also provides a dashboard that users can use to see where their personal data has been collected. This dashboard allows users to be able to delete all data that Google has collected, stop data collection, or automatically delete data over a certain period of time.
Here are the steps to delete data stored on Google, quoted from The Verge:
First find the user data in the Google account
Getting started is pretty easy: Open the user's Google account page in a web browser to view Google subscriptions such as, devices used to sign in with the Google account, saved passwords, and other information.
Click 'Data and Privacy' on the left.
Look for the 'History' setting. It's divided into three main categories: Web and apps, location, and YouTube.
Click the 'My Activity' button at the bottom of that section to see a complete list of this data. Users will be able to see everything they have done and logged within Google, starting with the most recent.
Select 'Filter' by date and product to limit results to a specific date range or app.
To remove an applied filter, click the 'X' next to it at the top of the list.
Users can also view more details about the entry simply by clicking on the entry in the list.
Delete data history from Google
Regarding data that has been collected and recorded by Google, users can delete it in several different ways.
If the user sees the complete activity list, click 'Delete' (to the right of the filter). Users can delete records from the last hour, last day, or in a custom range, or can also click 'Always' to delete them all.
If you have filtered the list by date or product, click 'Remove' and this will remove everything that matches the filter.
Regardless of whether the list is filtered or not, users can click the 'X' next to any entry to remove it.
Auto-delete and turn off data collection
If users want Google to automatically delete data or stop collecting data, you can use the following three categories: Web and apps, location, and YouTube.
From the list of activities, click on one of 'Web & App Activity', 'Location History', or 'YouTube History'. Then the next options screen will look very similar across all three categories:
Click 'Turn off' to stop collecting data in a category. If selecting this option, select 'Turn Off' to keep the data collected so far or 'Turn Off' and delete the activity.
If you choose to delete data, the user will be shown a preview of the deleted data before confirming the action.
At the bottom of the page, there is a 'Select' option for auto-delete to have data in this category deleted after a certain period of time depending on the user, such as 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months.