It’s no secret that Google tracks your activity—in Chrome, on Google Maps, through your web searches—to show ads that are more targeted to you and your interests. It’s the trade-off we make for using all of Google’s apps for free, but you do have some control over what happens to that data.

Through your Google Account dashboard on the web, you can review all the information Google has collected about you across its multitude of apps, and delete some (or all) of it. You can even choose to have it automatically wiped after a set period of time, if you'd rather not have your online activity haunt you forever.

Deleting this data doesn’t mean you’ll see fewer ads in Google products, but the ads you do see won’t be as accurately targeted in terms of content. Unless you’re into targeted ads, that’s probably not a big deal, and besides, the less of your data floating around the better — regardless of whether it’s exposed somehow or if someone else gains access to your Google Account.

From your Google Account dashboard on the web, click Data & Privacy to view your Google activity. It's split into three sections: Web & App Activity (where most of your information is stored), Location History (your location data across all of Google's apps and services), and your YouTube history, which has its own section.