In a world where online privacy is increasingly under threat, having control over your data is essential.
We live in a digital age where every one of our online actions leaves a trace. Whether browsing a website, sharing photos on social media or sending emails, our personal data they come constantly collected and archived. This collection of information often happens without us being fully aware of it, creating a detailed archive of our habits, preferences and daily activities.
Despite growing awareness about online privacy, many people don’t know exactly what data is being collected or how to access this information. Luckily, various tools made available by Google can help us shed light on what is recorded. Finding out what big tech companies know about us can be a critical step in protecting our privacy.
The service we are talking about is Google Takeout, a tool that allows you to consult and download a copy of your data stored on various Google services. Apart from this, Takeout also allows users to easily transfer your data on another device or service and thus help free up space on Google Drive, storing older documents and photos on physical media or other cloud services.
How to find out the data recorded about us
To start, go to takeout.google.com and log in to your Google account. Once you log in, you’ll see a list of data types that can be included in your archive. By default, Google selects all available data, so it is advisable to deselect everything and choose only the information you want to download.
An example of the possible use of Takeout is the download photo albums from Google Photos. Once you’ve deselected everything, scroll down and select the Google Photos checkbox. Then, click on “Include all photo albumsi” to select only the specific albums you are interested in.
Once you have made your selection, click on “OK” and then on “Next step”. At this stage, you will be able to choose the file format, frequency and archive destination. The default format is .zip, which can be easily opened on most computers.
Once the archive is ready, you will receive an email with a link to download it. This process can take from several minutes to several days, depending on the amount of data. It is important to remember that you have seven days time to download the archive before it is deleted by Google.
Google Takeout also allows you to view a history of created archives for the past 30 days, giving you a convenient way to track your data exports. This tool, therefore, helps users take control of information and at the same time provides a detailed overview of what is recorded about us.
