[LINK] How to ask Google to delete everything?

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Thu Mar 1 15:40:16 AEDT 2012


Here is my quick attempt to provide instructions.
(Thanks to several people who have provided assistance!).

**BUT** All that Google lets you do is delete your account.
         Google keeps your data, even if you delete your account.
         So you may want to read the second half of this email first.

________________________________________________________________________

TO DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT:

1. Go to <http://google.com/history>http://google.com/history

There are two possibilities.

A.  You may be already signed-in (whether you know it or not).
     [They try very hard to get you to stay logged-in all the time]

     If so, you will need to start at 2 in the list below.

B.  You may need to sign in.

In this case, you should see a 'Sign in' box on the right.

1. Sign In using whatever the Email-address was that you gave to
    Google when you set the account up, and the associated Password

    [You may have difficulties if you haven't used the account for a
    while, because some email-addresses are killed off periodically.]

2. Click on the arrow at the top right, at the end of your email-address

3. Click on 'Privacy'

4. Click on 'Privacy tools', at the top of the shaded area on the right

5. Click on 'Google Dashboard' at the top of that page

6. Click on 'Manage account' at the top of the shaded area on the right

7. Click on 'Close entire account and delete all services and info ...'

    That should offer you a deletion page that looks like this:
    http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/GoogleDelete-120301.tiff

    Clicking all the right boxes should result in a confirmation:
    "Your account has been deleted"

8. Click on 'Go to web history' and follow the instructions there as well

9. You may need to click on each service in the list that you see, in turn,
    because you might have used lots of services that need to be deleted
    individually.

[After I finished preparing that, this page was drawn to my attention:
http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=32046&topic=14
[It helps a little, but not all that much.]

________________________________________________________________________

**BUT**

YOUR DATA HAS NOT BEEN DELETED.

All that the process described above does is close your account.

So YOU can never see the data again.

But Google has kept it, and can do whatever it likes with it.

(This afternoon, there are a few minor constraints on what they can 
do with it.  But the company claims that it can change the Terms any 
time it wants to, without notice.  So it can do anything it likes 
with your data).


If you think that Google's ability to keep your data forever is terrible

COMPLAIN TO ALL OF THESE PEOPLE:

mailto:iflynn at google.com (Iarla Flynn, Public Policy, Google Australia)
mailto:Rod.Sims at accc.gov.au (Chair of the ACCC)
mailto:Timothy.Pilgrim at oaic.gov.au (Privacy Commissioner)

________________________________________________________________________

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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