Secret #2: Your Privacy & Google – Exploring the Internet

Everyone uses google. It seems like one of the absolutes of the world: sky is blue, grass is green, if you are surfing the web, you’re using google, right? Wrong. 

There are good alternatives out there. Not just shady, or kinda working, or knock-off alternatives, I mean real, working, successful, established, alternatives that even come ‘preinstalled’ on certain apps. But I digress.

   Your Privacy and Google

There is a lot I want to talk about when it comes to google and privacy settings. To say the least, you need to know that when it comes to privacy, google is your enemy. To explain, first I need to explain the difference between a browser and a search engine. Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Tor are browsers. Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Bing are search engines.

To make it easier to understand each, let's pretend the internet is a library, and books are websites.
A browser is the the building. It is where you go if you want to get to the library. The building itself doesn't really matter; it can be anywhere, be any shape, as long as it can get us to the books.
But the search engine is the librarian; the person we go to inside the building, that will actually take us to what we are searching for. 

Now, Mrs. Google, the librarian, is a very good librarian. Perhaps one of the first to have signed up for the job, she proved herself quickly to be better than the rest at finding what we asked for. The library kept history of what we checked out, and all was good.

But then, Mrs. Google decided she would also keep her own history of what we checked out.
A little weird for a librarian, but alright.
But then, she started making her own recommendations of what we may like, based on the data she gathered.
Alright, maybe its okay sometimes?
But then! She started following you home to see what you do outside of the library! "Where are you shopping?", "What are you buying?", "I have a book for that!" Get away from me!!

Unfortunately, many people get used to having Mrs. Google in the bushes following them places, and even convince themselves, "eh, she's harmless." So now she has a new side business aside from librarian, and is actively making money by selling the information she is gathering on you, to anyone that asks.
That's Google.

 

What do I do?

There are two ways to prevent google from tracking you. The first way is to walk up to her and tell her stop following you (via google account settings). The second way? Well for starters, do not go to the library that google built; Google Chrome. Instead, use any other library, and tell them to 'fire' google (via browser settings). I personally recommend hiring Mrs. Duck (DuckDuckGo.com). She's cool. Literally just gives you what you were looking for, with the same great accuracy, and none of the stalking. Check it out at duckduckgo.com/.

I did both, but option 1 is definitely the quickest, easiest and most important when it comes to it's impact on your privacy, so if you do nothing else, at least do option 1.

Option 1: Stopping google via account settings

I'll be quick, its actually pretty easy.

Step 1. Go to google.com, sign in, click the box in the top right corner of the page, hit "Account", then "data and privacy" on the left.
...or click here: https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-privacy.

Step 2. Scroll down, and pause or turn off everything you see. (Okay, maybe leave Youtube History, but thats it!)

Step 3. Double check: Is "Web & App Activity" paused? Is "Location History" paused (yes google maps will still work, but its been acting funny lately anyway so you might want to switch to waze)? Is "Ads Settings" turned off? Is "Personal results in search" paused?

If the answer is yes then you're free now. No more google in the bushes, for that account.

Option 2: Stopping Google (and more) via browser settings

On Firefox

Step 0.5: Do option 1.

Step 1: Go to "settings", or type "about:preferences" in the top bar. 

Step 2: Click "Home" on the left, and change "homepage and windows" from google.com to https://duckduckgo.com (or any website you want to appear when you first open your browser, like netflix.com).

Step 3: Still in settings, go to "Search" on the left under home, change "Default Search Engine" from google, to "DuckDuckGo". 

Step 4 [Important]: Still in settings, go to "Privacy & Security". Under "Enhnaced Tracking Protection", switch fromm "Standard" to "Strict". 

Step 5: Under "Send websites a "Do Not Track" signal..." Select "Always".

Step 6: Under "Cookies and Site Data", click "clear data". This will clear all the data sites have stored on you on that device, but will not clear your history or saved logins. 

 

 

And you're good! You are now the only one with access to you're personal information. 

 

On Safari 

Step 1: Go to Preferences

Step 2: Click "General", change "Homepage" to DuckDuckGo.com (or whatever like netflix.com, just not google.com)

Step 2: Click "Search", change "Search Engine" from Google to DuckDuckGo

Step 3: Click "Privacy", make sure "Website Tracking" is on.

On Chome

What? It's Google Chrome.
Step 1 is Don't Use Google Chrome.

 

On All Other Browsers

Step 1: Go to Settings -> Search, change from google to Duck.

Step 2: Go to Settings -> Privacy, turn off anything saying allow "personalization" or "data collection". That includes 'surveys', 'studies', 'technical data' or 'interactions'.

And from now on, anytime you make an account anywhere, look for privacy & security settings, and turn off anything saying "personalization" or the above because those are all just nice ways of saying they want to follow you home. 

Want to know more about how to "DeGoogle"? https://www.howtogeek.com/348792/how-to-remove-google-from-your-life/ or alternatively, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=degoogle
Its a movement now apparently. #degoogle

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