Last year, Google rolled out a feature that gave users the option to auto-delete their user data from some of Google’s core services, namely Location History, search, voice and YouTube activity data. Today they announced that Google will be turning on this option by default, instead of the data being kept until the user chooses to delete it themselves.
From today, users will have the “Auto-delete activity older than 18 months” selected by default. This option will be selected by default for new accounts too. As usual, users can choose to change from this option to delete data after 3 months or completely turn off auto-delete. Google states that they will only “keep information only for as long as it’s useful to you.”
To help improve user privacy controls, Google is making two other changes: adding the ability to access Google Account controls directly from Search and easier access to incognito mode in many Google apps.
Users can now directly look up terms like “Google Privacy Checkup” and “Is my Google Account secure?” on Google Search and a box that is visible only to the user will show their privacy and security settings.
An update to the Google app in iOS is bringing the option to turn on incognito mode quickly by long-pressing the profile picture. This feature will also be coming soon to other Google apps, for both iOS and Android.