How to Stop Google from Keeping a Record of Every Search You Make

Do you use Gmail, the Chrome browser, or other Google service? Then Google may be keeping a record of every search query you make. That’s right; if you have a Google account, Google may know everything you ever looked for on the web. That is, unless you turn off Google’s collecting of all your searches and clean out the web history they’ve kept. Here’s how.

Turn off Google Web History

1. Go to the web page https://history.google.com
2. Sign in to your Google account if you aren’t already signed in.
3. Click the gear icon in the upper right corner (example shown in figure on the right).
4. Choose “Settings”’
5. The page that opens contains the section shown in the figure below.
6. Click the button “Turn off” to stop Google collecting the data. If you change your mind, you can always turn Web History back on.

Delete items in Google Web History

1. Previously collected data will still be there. To remove it, click the link contained in the word “delete” in the sentence, “You can also delete all past Google search activity or remove particular items from your recent activity.” The link is hard to see and I have highlighted it in yellow in the figure. 
2. You will get a dialog box asking if you want to delete all items
3. Click the button “Delete All”
4. You can also delete only selected items by using the link contained in the phrase “recent activity” as indicated in the figure

What does Google do with this data? Why, they sell the information to advertisers, of course. Or maybe, they also give it to the government. Who knows?

Android/iPhone tip: How to wipe all your saved web passwords

Sure, it’s handy that your smartphone can remember and fill in usernames and passwords for your various web accounts. But it also means anyone else with access to your handset can log in to your most sensitive accounts, too.

Indeed, the more often you tap “yes” when your iPhone or Android phone asks “Would you like to save this password?”, the more saved passwords you have sitting in your pocket—and that could lead to big trouble if your precious smartphone ever lands in the wrong hands.

A good rule of thumb is to select “Never for this site” or “Not now” when your phone offers to save passwords for your most important accounts, such as your online banking site.

But what if you’ve already saved passwords for more sites than you can count?

In that case, you might consider starting fresh by wiping all the web passwords from your iPhone or Android phone’s memory.

You might want to think twice before saving passwords for sensitive online accounts on your iPhone.

For Android phones:

• Open the Browser application, tap the Menu button, select Settings, then tap “Privacy & security.”
• Scroll down to the Passwords section and tap “Clear passwords.” You’ll get one last chance to change your mind; if you’re ready to go ahead, tap the “OK” button.
• If you want your phone to stop asking to save web passwords, clear the check from the “Remember passwords” checkbox.
• For iPhone:
• Tap Settings from the home screen, then tap Safari.
• Next, tap AutoFill, then tap the “Clear All” button under the “Names & Passwords” setting.
• To keep your iPhone from saving any more passwords, flip the “Names & Passwords” switch to “Off.”

What to Do with a Hung or Unresponsive Windows 7 Program

Sooner or later it happens to all of us – a Windows program gets hung up and just sits there frozen. You can open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and try to close the hung program or use the command line to kill it. But sometimes you might want to see if you can find out why the program got hung up in the first place or you may want to try to unfreeze it. In that case, Windows 7 has just the system tool you need.

It’s called Resource Monitor and has many features. One of them is a way to troubleshoot programs that don’t respond. Here is how it works:

• Open Resource Monitor by entering “resmon” in the Start-Search bar. Alternatively, open Task Manager( keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Esc), and click on the "Performance" tab and then the button "Resource Monitor". 
• An example of the window that opens is shown in this figure. In the CPU section of the "Overview" tab, right-click the executable file of the hung application. The listing of the hung application will be colored red. 

• The context menu that opens is shown on the right. You can close the hung process from this menu or you can choose the entry “Analyze Wait Chain…” to see what other processes may be interacting with the hung program. If you know that an entry in the wait chain is not crucial you can try ending that process to see if it frees up the hung program. However, take care not to end a process that is vital to system operation. Ending a process here is not permanent, however, and rebooting the computer will normally restart everything.
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15 Awesome, Useful Internet Tricks

1. For clumsy fingered folks, if you accidentally close a tab on Google Chrome, press Control+Shift+T and it’ll come back from the dead.

2. If you’re in a particular country that can’t access important content on US websites like Hulu or Netflix, Firefox and Google Chrome offer a free extension called Media Hint that can have you watching Orange is the New Black and other American exclusives in no time.

3. Control+F or Command+F will allow you to find specific terms on a page. If only life had a version of this for when we lose our keys, phone, dignity, etc.

4. Want to surf the web in private with no recording of your web habits? For Firefox users, press control+shift+p, or for Chrome it’s control+shift+N, and you’ll be browsing off the record. This isn’t just for porn watching purposes as one might think, but for several other benefits such as websites that track your cookies and use ‘em to their advantage (I’m looking at you, hotel & airline companies). This simple incognito window defeats their swindling ways.

5. If you hate YouTube’s (or other website’s) ads before the start of your videos, Adblock Plus is what you need in your life. It’s basicallylike having Dikembe Mutombo protecting your eyes from any type of advertisement.

6. If you put define: in front of a word and Google it, you’ll get that word’s definition.

7. What you type into the URL bar can be surrounded by www. & .com by pressing control + enter.

8. For more specific search results, try utilizing the AROUND feature. It allows you to find separate phrases, not just mentioned in the same article or page, but inside of a specific amount of words apart. For example, if you wanted to find writings about ‘Kanye West’ and ‘pizza’ within 12 words of each other, your search would look like this:

“Kanye West” AROUND (12) “Pizza”

Having the terms you’re searching in quotation marks, the word AROUND written in ALL CAPS and the number in parenthesis are all necessary for this to work.

9. Another way to improve search accuracy is by taking advantage of the minus sign. E.g. Selena Gomez -Bieber. Boom! – you’ll get all the glorious Selena results without any of Justin’s douchey, mop bucket urinating shenanigans killing your vibe.

10. If you’re too lazy to lift a finger and click on your desired tab, control+tab (or control+shift+tab) will switch you between ‘em. As a lethargic tab hoarder, this is a great way to minimize hand movement while allowing that article from three weeks ago, that you swear you’re going to read, to remain open.

11. Corrupt A File is an enabler that can be a procrastinator’s best (or worst?) friend, allowing them to corrupt a file and make it seem like they did their work on time, but it’s unfortunately malfunctioning.

12. You can find a lot of textbooks on Google if you enter their title, then the desired file type. So an example would look like this: Book Title filetype:PDF

13. Too lazy to get up and grab your glasses? Control + or control – will allow you to adjust text sizes larger or smaller.

14. Need a disposable e-mail to avoid putting yourself at risk for spam? There’s a place called 10 Minute Mail that’s pretty self-explanatory.

15. If you’re going to do online shopping, try leaving your desired purchases in your cart for a while, and eventually you’ll get some type of discount code in an email that gives off desperate ex vibes, borderline begging you to finish the purchase. (This doesn’t ALWAYS work, but it happens enough that it’s worth trying if you don’t need whatever you’re ordering hastily.)