How to clear your search history on the Web

Your search history contains some of the personal information you disclose online: your health, your mental state, your interests, places you travel, fears and shopping habits. And that’s information that most people would want to keep private. Unfortunately their Web searches are tracked and stored in databases, where information can be used for almost anything, including targeted and discriminated against based on their profile advertising prices.

“Nobody understands the long-term impact of this data collection”, said Casey Oppenheim, co-founder of Disconnect, a company that helps people stay anonymous online”. Luckily Google, Microsoft Bing and smaller companies offer ways to clear a search history or avoid creating it, but hide the ads can be more difficult.

Google it easy to find your personal search history on the Web, manage and even delete it. Just go to google.com/history and enter in your Google account. There you can see all see all of its history and navigate by category. For example, in the last month you search for images of Gal Gadot (who will play the role of the new Wonder Woman), “pointed nails fashion” and “hair transplant Wayne Rooney”, plus a few things definitely smarter.

If you want to delete this record, click the gear icon at the top right of the screen and choose Settings. There you can disable the search history so that Google does not keep future searches. You can clear your history database or just Google remove specific items from their recent history.

Nobody understands the long-term impact of this data collection, said Casey Oppenheim, co-founder of Disconnect, a company that helps people to stay anonymous online. But this does not stop sending trace messages. It only removes a potentially embarrassing or damaging historical record. Google also allows you to choose to avoid targeted ads and web search and Gmail at google.com/ settings/ads.

You can disable and delete your search history in Microsoft’s Bing www.bing.com/ profile/history. Yahoo! allows you to disable search history futures but has no way to delete the old record. Go to search.yahoo.com /preferences/disable it for your records. Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, says there’s another way, and may even include making money with search-related ads.

“It’s a myth that search engines need to track their movements to make more money with Web searches”, Weinberg said. “Most of the ads linked to searches based on what you typed in the search at the time and has nothing to do with your past history”.

DuckDuckGo said its searches more than doubled between 2012 and 2013 to more than billion per year. That is very little compared to Google (100,000 million searches per month) or even Bing or Yahoo, but growth shows a real interest in the privacy of searches.

Use DuckDuckGo or other private motor requires getting used to. DuckDuckGo does not automatically complete the search terms, for example, but PrivateLee other. Obviously not filter results based on your past searches either. Therefore the results may seem a little strange. If you like Google, Yahoo! or Bing as search engine but want it to be anonymous, try Disconnect Search (Log Search).

The network version (search.disconnect.me) allows you to specify engine as Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Blekko, but performs the search without disclosing your Internet or save the search history.

It is a myth that the search engines need to track its movements to make more money with web searches, said = DuckDuckGo. You can also install Disconnect Search plug-in for Firefox or Chrome browsers so you do not have to remember to go through that site. There is an application available for Android, but not for Apple iOS. Disconnect also offers other privacy tools to block advertising and tracking browsers in iOS.

Disconnect Search is not perfect. For starters, requires that all searches are performed with the engine you have set as a priority. So if you click a link on the page will not end in Yahoo search Yahoo search engine if you have established.

You also can not handle Google map links. If you click on a link to a place on Google maps from a Web site, for example, a search result that direction instead of the map appears.

So why do all this? If you’ve been wondering why in every place you visit, in your email, on Facebook or anywhere else you go online you appear strikingly specific notices is because those advertisers know it very well. Companies like Google search history to give their advertisers, who use it to show ads related to what matters and that’s just on the Google site.

When you click on search result links the sites you visit can access your search terms and your IP address, which can show the location of the computer you are using. That means those third places also know what and who is sought or at least where your computer.

Besides your search history can create something called filter bubble (bubble filter) by accumulating a record of clicks and searches, Google will begin to deliver results tailored to what you think you want to see searches. As a result its results begin to reinforce its world view or even begin to be less accurate, as only see the places you’ve clicked before.

While Google gives users some control over their online activities and search and advertising tracking, the company will always agree disseminate information to present best ads and thus collect as much as possible. That’s not necessarily what’s best for you. Privacy is important for many reasons, tangible and intangible, and it is good exercise control when possible.