You're probably aware that Google keeps tabs on what you're up to on its devices, apps, and services—but you might not realize just how far its tracking reach extends, into the places you go, the purchases you make, and much more. It's an extensive set of data, but you can take more control over what Google collects about you and how long the company keeps it. Here's how.

It's worth emphasizing first that we're really dealing with two topics: The amount of data Google collects on you, which is a lot, and what Google then does with it. Google would say its data collection policies improve its services—helping you find a restaurant similar ones you've liked previously, say—whereas users might disagree.

A lot of the data we're going to talk about here is only visible to you, or used in a limited way to make ads more relevant to you. Ultimately, your choice is either to trust Google to use all this data responsibly (you can view the privacy policy here), not use Google services at all, or limit the information it can gather about you. Since the first two are basically binary, we're going to focus on that third option.

On the Web

The best place to start taking control over Google's tracking habits is the Activity Controls page in your Google Account on the web. If you're currently signed into Google in your browser, that link should take you straight to it. The data Google holds on you is split into six sections. You can turn off tracking on any of them using the toggle switches you see on screen.

The top two sections, labeled Web & App Activity and Location History, are the big ones. First, Web & App Activity, which is—as you might guess from the name—everything you do on the web while signed into Chrome, everything you search for while signed into Google, and everything you do inside Google's apps.

Click the Manage activity link under Web & App Activity to see the sort of detail Google's logs go into. You'll see webpages you've visited, web searches you've run, and apps you've opened up on your Android phone, though not what you did inside those apps.

These measures will stop activity showing up in your Google account.

Click on Filter by date & product at the top to see all the apps this tracking covers, from Google Assistant to the Google Play Store. The same dialog also lets you filter by date. Once you've applied a filter—such as Android—you can delete all matching entries by clicking the trash can icon. Individual entries can be erased from the record by clicking the three dots to the side of an entry and choosing Delete.

To delete everything, you need to select the Delete activity by link on the left. You can then select All time as the date range and All products as the filter, and delete everything Google holds on you in this Web & App Activity category.

Another option, which has been recently introduced, is to have Google automatically wipe everything older than three months or older than 18 months. You'll see these options appear if you click the Choose to delete automatically button at the top of the activity list.

The second section, Location History, which largely gathers data from your phone, works a little differently. Again you can follow the Manage activity link to see and edit the data Google has stored, but in this case the records are shown on a map—you can see the little red dots marking places you've been to, and use the drop-down menus to the top left to look at a more specific range of dates.