How to minimise targeted ads on social media: Google & YouTube
This guide takes you through a series of settings you can tweak to minimise how your data impacts the targeted adverts you see through Google and Youtube.
Google is enormous and is expert at accumulating data. Its main source of revenue is advertising. The company dominates search, has a dominant web browser Chrome, owns YouTube (and many other companies), is the designer/develop of Android, the operating system that runs on nearly 75% of global smart phones.
Below is a set of steps you can take if you wish to minimise ad targeting when using Google.
1. Go to gmail.com and sign in
2. Click on Google Account
On mobile you can go to Settings > Google and click Google Account
3. Click on Data and Personalisation (Link when signed in)
On mobile, scroll to the right to Data & Personalisation
4. Scroll down to Activity Controls
How it looks on mobile
5. Click (tediously) one-by-one and pause
6. If you have a YouTube account tied to your Gmail account, this is where you pause that too. After you’ve paused all activity scroll further down to Ad Personalisation
7. Click “Go to ad settings”
On mobile scroll down and click Go to settings in “Ad personalisation”
8. Toggled off!
How it looks on mobile
You can also tweak your settings to prevent Google from using personal information it gleans from other forms of activity.
Toggle the button next to show personal results to grey.
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