Here’s something I want you to do before you read another word.
Open a new tab. Go to myadcenter.google.com. Sign in if it asks.
Look at what’s there. If the page looks empty or says personalized ads are off, don’t close the tab. That means Google stopped showing you the file. It didn’t stop building it.
Google lists the topics it thinks you care about, the brands it thinks you buy, your age, gender and parental status. Built from your searches, YouTube history, Maps locations and every website running a Google ad. Which is most of the internet.
The reaction is almost always the same. How does it know that? How do I make it stop?
🔍 What Google knows
In My Ad Center, you’ll see categories like Home Improvement, Health Conditions, Financial Planning, Baby and Toddler. Onetime searches. Old research. That 2 a.m. rabbit hole from three years ago. Google kept all of it.
Delete individual interests with the minus button. But that’s trimming edges. Here’s what actually matters.
Go to myaccount.google.com, click Data & Privacy, then Web & App Activity. Master switch. Search history, Chrome browsing, Maps queries, Play Store activity, all of it. Turn it off. Set auto-delete to three months, so data doesn’t live there forever.
While you’re there, turn off Location History. Google has a timeline of everywhere you’ve been. Every restaurant. Every doctor’s office. Every address you’ve driven to. Gone.
🤖 The one nobody’s touched yet
If you use Gemini, it’s been building a memory of your conversations since late 2025. On by default.
Tap your profile, open Gemini Apps Activity, turn off Keep Activity. Delete what’s already there.
Here’s what Google doesn’t put in a big font. If Gemini activity was ever on, snippets may have gone to human reviewers for AI training. Once a human sees it, deleting your history doesn’t remove it. Stays in their system for up to three years.
What you can do: Use Temporary Chat for anything sensitive. Look for the icon next to New Chat in Gemini. Conversations get wiped after 72 hours and never used for training. Use it whenever you’d be embarrassed to see it on a billboard.
📩 Send this to someone who uses Google every single day and has never once looked at what it’s collected. So, everyone you know.