Privacy Facts for Teens : Teen Privacy Guide

Whenever you use the internet, apps and sites can estimate roughly where you are, and the same is true for Google. Google may also know your precise location, depending on your device settings. (See How precise is my location?)

When you search on Google, like with Search, Maps, or Google Assistant, your current location may be used to give you more helpful results. For example, if you search for restaurants, the most helpful results are probably for restaurants near where you are.

See How you can manage your location

When you search on Google, Google will always estimate the general area that you’re searching from. Google, like any app or website you use that connects to the Internet, can estimate your location based on your device’s IP address. For more, see How does Google know where I am?

To choose whether to send your precise location when you use Google, you can turn location permissions on or off for individual apps, sites, and for your device.

If you set your home or work addresses, and Google estimates that you’re at home or work, then the exact address will be used for your search.

Your general area

When you search on Google, Google will always estimate the general area that you’re searching from. This way Google can give you relevant results, and keep your account safe by detecting unusual activity, such as signing in from a new city.

A general area is larger than 3 sq km and has at least 1,000 users so that the general area of your search doesn’t identify you, helping to protect your privacy.

Your precise location

If you give your permission, Google can use your precise location. For example, Google needs your precise location to return the most relevant results for searches like “ice cream near me” or turn-by-turn walking directions to a store.

Precise location means exactly where you are, such as a particular address.

It’s up to you. If you use Google Location Sharing, you can share your real-time location with friends and family across Google services.

Check if you’re sharing your location

Location Sharing is off by default. If you want to share your real-time location, you need to choose and confirm who you want to share with and for how long. You can stop sharing your location at any time.

See Sharing your real-time location with others

What other people can see about you on Google services depends on what and how you share:

Sharing publicly

If you contribute to apps like Google Maps, other people can see your name and picture. For example, if you rate your favorite ice cream store, other people can see your rating, name, and picture if they explore that store on Google Maps.

Sharing privately

If you share things like photos, videos, and docs with others, your name and picture are visible to the person you’re sending them to in addition to what you’re sharing.

Think carefully before sharing with others, and understand what level of access you're giving. For example, when sharing access to things like folders in Google Drive, or albums in Google Photos, people may have continued access as you add new content.

You can choose to share specific content with other people in the Google services that you use.

Don’t forget that when you share, it’s possible for other people to reshare, even in apps and on sites outside of Google.

You can delete your own content from your account anytime, but this doesn’t delete copies that you’ve already shared.

Be thoughtful about what you share, and share only with people you trust.

We don’t share your personal information with companies, organizations, or individuals outside of Google except in limited cases like when we’re legally required to.

If you have a Google Account through your school (a Google Workspace for Education account), the school administrator who manages your account will have access to your information.

When you use Google services, we collect information we need in order to provide them to you, make them more useful to you, and for other reasons as explained in Why does Google collect data?.

With your settings, you can limit the data we collect and how that data is used. For example, if you don’t want us to save your YouTube History to your Google Account, you can turn YouTube History off. See How can I decide what Google saves?

Your personal information includes things you provide to us which personally identify you, such as your name or email address. It also includes other data that can be reasonably linked to you by Google, such as information we associate with you in your Google Account.

Your personal information includes two types of things:

We collect information we need in order to provide our services, make them more useful to you, and for other reasons as explained in Ways we use data.

For example, Google Maps can help you get to where you’re going while avoiding traffic because it combines information about where you are (your data) with public data (maps and information about public places).

Provide our services

We use data to provide our services, like processing the terms you search for in order to return results.

Maintain & improve our services

Data helps us maintain and improve our services. For example, we can track outages. And understanding which search terms are most frequently misspelled helps us improve spell-check features used across our services.

Develop new services

Data helps us develop new services. For example, we were able to understand how people organized their photos in our first photos app, Picasa, and used that data to help design and launch Google Photos. And we may use your interactions with our services, including our generative AI products, to develop and improve these services.

Provide personalized services, including content and ads

We use data to provide personalized content, for example, recommendations for videos you may like. Depending on your settings and how old you are, we may show you personalized ads based on your interests.

Measure performance

We also use data to measure performance and understand how our services are used

Communicate with you

We might use your email address to send you a notification if we detect suspicious activity

Protect Google, our users, and the public

We use data to keep people safer online, like detecting and preventing fraud

“Personalization” is about using the information we collect to tailor our apps and sites to you, for example:

• Recommendations for videos you may like
• Security tips adapted to how you use Google services (see Security Checkup)

We also use data to personalize ads except in cases like when the setting is off or for certain ages.

We try to make the ads we show as useful as possible. But we don’t personalize ads for certain ages or for people who turn Ad personalization off.

We can still make ads useful even without personalizing them. For example, if you’re looking at a page of results for “new shoes,” you might see an ad from a sneaker company. The ad can be based on general factors like the time of day, your general location, and content of the page you’re looking at.

As you use a Google service, like Photos, there are settings that let you decide things like whether you want to back up and sync your photos.

There are also settings that help personalize your experience across Google services. Two key ones are Web & App Activity and YouTube History.

When these controls are on:

• Information about your activity on Google services is saved to your Google Account and
• Saved information is used to personalize your Google experience

You can delete data saved in your Google Account. Data you choose to permanently delete gets removed from our systems. We follow a careful process to make sure this data is completely removed from our servers or kept only in a form that can’t be associated with you.

Visit My Activity to review the activity saved in your Google Account, such as prompts you’ve entered, and things you’ve searched for, read, and watched. You can delete specific pieces of activity or all your activity within a specific time range.

You can also choose to have your activity deleted automatically.

Your content includes things like emails, photos, videos, docs, sheets, comments, contacts, and calendar events.

Visit Download your data to create an archive of your content — either to back it up or to take it to another company if you want to try a different service.

You have controls that let you choose how to use Google, even when you’re signed out. When you’re signed out, visit g.co/privacytools to change these settings:

Search customization

Uses your Google searches from this browser for more relevant results and recommendations.

YouTube Search and Watch History

Uses your activity on YouTube, like videos you watch and things you search for, to personalize YouTube for you.

You can also block some or all cookies in your browser, but this can cause certain features across the web to stop working. For example, many websites require cookies to be turned on when you want to sign in.

Signed-out users can also choose whether they want to see personalized ads, though we don’t personalize ads for certain ages.