Google provides one-stop access to personal data

Posted on 5 Nov 2009 at 12:06

Google has begun providing users with an easier way to discover precisely how much of their personal data the search firm is storing.

Dubbed Google Dashboard, the service allows users to log in and find all the personal information held about them in Google’s myriad applications, including Gmail, YouTube, Blogger and several more.

The Dashboard gives a highly detailed, application-by-application breakdown of what’s stored in your account. Gmail, for example, includes full transcripts of archived web chats and logs of the most recent messages in key folders.

Web History, meanwhile, shows full details of searches made across all of Google’s services, including images, Maps and the regular web search. It allows users to wipe their entire search history from the Dashboard screen.

Users of Google Latitude, the service that broadcasts your current position to approved contacts, are also shown the last destination logged.

Much, if not all, of this information has been made available previously through the individual applications. However, this is the first time Google has collated the data into a single screen.

Google says Dashboard is designed to offer users with greater transparency and control over their data.

“The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we’re delighted to be the first internet company to offer this—and we hope it will become the standard,” the company claims on the Google blog.

You can find out what Google knows about you at google.com/dashboard.

Author: Barry Collins

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