Pay attention to your Privacy Policies(Find out what info has been collected about you)

byTheCatherine

14.5K followers

Updated 3 years ago

Even before you came to wealthy affiliates, Google would have been a fairly large part of your life. It is the search engine of choice for most people! Certainly, it is for most people who know how to change their browser settings. We have all heard horror stories of how governments have changed election results and also referendum results.

You may have realised that Amazon shares your darter with your neighbors, but you can turn this off. So today I am going to tell you how you can take control of your basic privacy settings. So without further ado let's start with switching off the ability to Amazon to share your data with your neighbors.

AMAZON

If you have either an Amazon Echo or a Ring security camera they are now connected to a network called Sidewalk . Essentially this shares your home Internet connection with your neighbors devices! As of June this year, this has now been rolled out so everyone automatically has their information shared unless of course, you have turned it off. Let's not even go into the question of why Amazon didn't ask people whether they wanted to opt into this function, they just activated it! As you have no real answers as to why this is done I would certainly recommend you would opt out. If you don't opt out then you have no control over the data which Amazon is transmitting.In suburban areas where Amazon Ring devices already over-police many doors and driveways, Sidewalk powerS more surveillance, more trackers — maybe even Amazon drones, all of which you have no real clear idea of what they're looking at! One thing you can be sure of is that the loss of your privacy outweighs any of the benefits.

Worse still you are actually paying for this service. Sidewalk allows your Echo device to share up to 500 megabytes per month of your Internet bandwidth. Apparently, Amazon does cap It
at 80 Kbps. Amazon's justification for this is that this is just a minute fraction of the bandwidth required to stream in HD video. However, if you purchase an Internet service that is capped then you are paying this bill rather than Amazon. Neat eh?

You can only turn this off using the Alexa app on a phone, you can't do this on a PC

• Open the Alexa app on your cell phone tap the More icon / Settings / Account Settings / Amazon Sidewalk. Turn off Enabled. It should now say Disabled.

Clear Alexa voice recordings

Are you aware that every time you speak to Alexa it saves your audio recordings. Whilst it is on it saves all of your audio conversations. This means it saves conversations of you having an argument with your family as well as cuddling the dog!

• In the Alexa app, open Settings/Alexa Privacy/Manage Your Alexa Data /Choose How Long to Save Voice Recordings, then select Don’t Save Recordings. Amazon claims that there is a downside to turning off the ability to save the recordings. It claims that Alexa works by listening to your commands and by turning off the ability to save your conversation it will make it harder for Alexa to understand you! If this worries you you can alternatively set it to auto-delete every 24 hours.
• Log in to your Amazon account on the web and, at the top of the page/Account & Lists Settings/Your Devices and Content/ Manage Devices → Devices (or, just use this link). Find your Echo or other Alexa device, click Manage Voice Recordings → Delete Voice Recordings.
• Or you can do it in the Alexa app in Settings/ Alexa Privacy / Review Voice History.
• Turn on this setting to delete voice recordings at any time by voice. In the Alexa app, go to Settings/ Alexa Privacy/ Manage Your Alexa Data and toggle on Enable Deletion by Voice

I certainly wouldn't recommend even having an Alexa device, but that's my personal opinion. If you do I would definitely recommend you unplug it when you're not using it and definitely don't buy a Halo band

Limiting Google

The great thing about limiting the privacy policies of Google is that they keep them all in one place so you can actually sort out Google and YouTube within one place. It has also been quasi honest in that it has created its own privacy settings in a “Privacy Checkup”

However, I would recommend that the default settings in the privacy checkup are very watered down. In other words, they still allow Google to track an awful lot of things. Again the same as Amazon they tell you things will work as well if you turn off these privacy settings. You will see ads that are less accurately targeted to you, Woopy doooooooooooooooo

I would recommend that the first thing you do is to turn off the ability that Google has to save your search and browsing activities.You may not think this is particularly important, but if you're researching any form of medical information for your family don't forget this is saved as well

• On the Web, go to myaccount.google.com / Data & Privacy/ Web & App Activity. You can also get here directly on the Activity controls page. Turn off the toggle for Web & App Activity so it is gray instead of blue. A pop-up will ask you to confirm you’re ready to “pause” the data collection. Confirm. Don't forget to add the Google Chrome browser as well by ticking that option.

If you want to know what information Google has already collected on you this will be
timeline.google.com insightful.

YouTube data collection

• From the Activity controls page, scroll down two location history and turn off the button next to location history so that it is greyed out . Continue just scroll down to YouTube History and toggle the switch off so that it is grayed out.