Chrome tracks more than you realize. Here’s how to take back your privacy

Chrome is the most popular browser in the world by a country mile. With more than 77% of the browser market across all kinds of devices, it’s most people’s first choice—especially after a fresh Windows install. But Chrome isn’t some privacy-centric upstart that puts the user first. Just like Google’s “free” search engine, Chrome’s users are the product. The browser collects a lot of information about how, when, and where it’s used, and that can make some people uneasy.

If you’re in the nothing-to-hide, nothing-to-fear camp, feel free to mosey along and enjoy your browsing experience with Chrome (resource hog or not). But if you’d rather limit how much data Chrome, and by extension, Google, has on you, there are steps you can take.

We don’t know everything Chrome gathers; Google keeps those details deliberately vague. But thanks to court filings, independent studies, and forensic testing from privacy researchers, we do have a clear picture of some of the data Chrome collects behind the scenes. Here’s what the evidence shows, and what you can do about it.

Telemetry data: How you use the browser

Jon Martindale

Just about every app collects data on how you use the app in question. It’s one of the best tools the developers have for figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and how they can improve the user experience based on the very real habits of its users. Chrome does much the same, but it’s certainly not something you have to be onboard with if you don’t want to.

Chrome actually has a built-in tool for disabling at least a portion of its telemetry recording. In the Chrome browser, select the three-dot menu icon in the top-right, then Settings > You and Google and look for Help improve Chrome’s features and performance. Toggle it off.

To further restrict how Google tracks you across sites and services, you can logout of the browser and change Chrome’s sign-in habits.

Navigate to Settings > You and Google and consider some of the available options. Select the Sign out of Chrome button to log out. You can also use the drop-down menu on the right to decide what happens when you sign in to other Google services. You don’t have to sign in to Chrome just to take advantage of your YouTube Premium account.

Your browsing history: The websites you visit

Jon Martindale

Unsurprisingly, Google’s Chrome web browser knows the websites you visit while using it. It’s been caught out collecting even in incognito mode in the past and had to settle a lawsuit just a few years ago, deleting enormous reams of data on user browser activity that it collected, even when it wasn’t supposed to.

Although we probably can’t trust Google to entirely disregard what you’re looking at in Chrome, you can at least tell it not to track some of it. Using incognito mode is a good start, but you can also adjust Chrome’s settings to reduce the chance it’s tracking which websites you visit.

Navigate to Settings > You and Google and next to Make searches and browsing better make sure to toggle that option to Off. For good measure, also turn off Enhanced spell check, as that sends what you’re typing to Google. It’ll stop the spellchecker working, but it’s a small price to pay for enhancing your privacy (at least a little).

You might also want to navigate to Settings > You and Google > Sync and Google services, and toggle off Improve search suggestions so that you only send your searches to whatever search engine you’re using, not also to your default one (which is probably Google).

If you don’t mind reducing your security a little, you can also navigate to Settings > Privacy and security > Security and make sure that under Safe browser, you select No protection. Any other option sends at least a portion of the URL you’re visiting and the page content to Google to check if it’s safe or not. Also toggle off Help improve security on the web for everyone for similar reasons.

Alternatively, if you want to improve your protection, the AI enhanced safe browsing feature is interesting.

Your purchasing habits and advert effectiveness

Jon Martindale

Google makes the majority of its money from advert sales, which is why it wants to collect so much data on its users in the first place: to better target ads at them. Although you can’t stop Google sharing some information with advertisers, you can reduce the amount the adverts that do reach you that are personalized.

Select the three-dot menu icon and navigate to Settings > Privacy and security. Select Ads privacy followed by each of the tree options in turn: Ad topics, Site-suggested ads, and Ads measurement. Toggle all of them to off to restrict the data Chrome shares with advertisers.

Alternatively, you can sack off all the adverts altogether by using an adblocker. Popular options include Ublock Origin and Ghostery and they’re simple to install – they’re some of my favorite Chrome extensions, in fact. You may need to chop and change which one you use on occasion, though, as Google and Chrome updates regularly break certain functions of one blocker or another. It’s an ongoing cat and mouse game.

Alongside advertisers, Chrome also helps others collect data on you and your browsing habits too. Using anti-tracker and advert blocking extensions and apps is the best way to block them out, but you can also use Chrome to make it more difficult for them as well.

• Navigate to Settings > Privacy and security > Third Party Cookies. Toggle on the Block third-party cookies off to cut down on what other sites and services can track about you, though certain site features may not work correctly.
• Navigate to Settings > Privacy and security > Third Party Cookies and toggle Send a ‘Do not Track’ request with your browsing traffic, to On. There’s no guarantee a site will listen to it, but if they do, it’s there at least.
• Settings > Privacy and security > Delete browsing data. You can do this manually to remove any browsing data Chrome has collected on you, but you can also have it do it automatically after you close the browser, or on a trigger of your setting. It won’t stop Chrome collecting any data, but it will make sure there’s no record of it on your local machine.

Using another browser

The ultimate way to stop Google collecting so much data about you via Chrome, is to simply not use Chrome. I know that’s a tricky proposition when it’s so often the default browser option and much of the internet is built with Chrome in mind. However, that’s not as strictly true as it might seem and you don’t even need to ditch the style of browser you’ve grown used to in moving over.

Chrome is based on the Chromium open source project but it’s not the only one. It’s the underlying core of Opera, Microsoft’s Edge, Vivaldi, and the Brave Browser. Any of them will feel quite similar to Chrome, even if they don’t work in quite the same way.

There’s also the venerable Firefox, which privacy proponents tend to be quite fond of. There’s also Colibri for a very minimalist browser experience, or Maxthon, which makes bold claims about its lack of user tracking.

Give one of them a try. You might find you like it.