Want greater control on how Google tracks you? Here's how

With Google being an integral part of most actions that we perform online, the internet giant has tremendous amounts of information being gathered every second. Its web of apps and services, that facilitate many of our daily conveniences, continuously generate and exchange date to improve the user experience.

From search history, device location, content to shopping preference, our phones are constantly gathering and sharing data with apps. There is the option of exercising greater control over your personal information by changing the monitoring instructions with Google for your device. However, this may be tricky as one can lose access to customisation features offered by Google.

To control the device monitoring by Google, go to the Activity Controls page. You will find this in your Google Account when logging in from the browser.

Your information with Google is categorized in different sections. In the Activity controls page, you have to option of switching any of the tracking categories on or off, using the toggles.

The categories you will find are:

• Web & App activity
• Location history
• YouTube history
• Ad personalisation

Google offers variety of options to manage activity monitoring. You can see and delete record via Manage activity.

You can also check the applications on your device that are being monitored by choosing date and product filters. You can delete specific entries or multiple records at once from here. You can delete all your past activity by going to activity by link, and then selecting all data from across products and times.

You can also choose an auto-delete option. Google will delete records either older than 3 or 18 months automatically, based on the option you select.