how to improve your privacy by hiding your data.
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We are going to explain to you how to improve YouTube privacy, so that you can configure the video service so that you share as little information as possible with Google. This may make your data more private, although I warn you from the beginning that it will affect things like video recommendations on your profile or receiving somewhat more interesting ads based on your preferences.
If these are sacrifices that you are willing to make, we will start by explaining how to hide your video preferences so that no one else can see them. Then we’ll tell you how to disable ads based on your viewing history … and how to delete items from that history or the list of all the videos you’ve seen.
Hide your video preferences
The first step you have to take would be to hide preferences such as your favorite videos, playlists or subscriptions. To do this, on the main YouTube page, click on your profile image to open a menu of options. In this menu, click on the Settings option to proceed to configure YouTube.
Once you enter the YouTube settings, you have to click on the Privacy category that you have in the left column of the screen. In this section you can configure the most basic privacy settings, those related to your likes and your subscriptions.
On this screen you have to mark the three privacy options in the likes and subscriptions section (1) to make your favorite videos, your playlists and your channel subscriptions private. Once you have marked the three options, click on the Save button (2) to apply the changes.
Turn off personalized ads
Google collects what videos you see on YouTube, and with that information creates a profile that it uses to send you personalized ads. If you do not want this data to be collected, you will have to deactivate this advertising option. To do this, on the main YouTube page, click on your profile image to open a menu of options. In this menu, click on the Settings option to proceed to setting up YouTube.
Once you enter the YouTube settings, you have to click on the Privacy category that you have in the left column of the screen. In this section you can configure the most basic privacy settings, such as your likes and subscriptions that we have talked about before, but you can also adjust the ads.
Once in the Privacy settings, at the bottom you will see a text about ads based on your interests. In this text, click on the Google Ads Settings link that is in it, which will take you to another tab to adjust these settings.
In this new tab, the page where the ad personalization option appears will be opened directly. The only thing left for you to do here is disable the button for this option, so that below you will see the text The personalization of ads is deactivated.
Clear your search and view history
Google also collects all the videos that you have seen on YouTube and the searches that you have made. This is saved in a history that you can delete completely or delete only some entries. To do so, on the YouTube home page click on the History option that you have in the left column.
On the history screen, you can delete the data in two ways. On one side, you can delete each video from the history feed (1) by clicking on the X that appears when you hover the mouse over it. And on the other hand, You can also click on the option Delete all playback history (2) that you have at the end of the column on the right.
If you choose the most forceful option, that of deleting all the history, a window will appear in which YouTube warns you that you will stop receiving personalized video recommendations, and that it is possible that until it returns to have data about you the recommendations of other Google products are also affected. To move on tap on Clear play history to confirm the action.
Control the privacy of the videos you upload
And finally, you can also configure the privacy of the videos you upload in case you don’t want all of them to be public. To do this you have to enter YouTube Studio, whose website is studio.youtube.com. Once on this website, click on the Videos section that will appear in the column on the left.
When you do this, you will enter a page where you have a list of all the videos that you have uploaded to YouTube. In this list, to the right of each title will appear its visibility. If you want to make a video no longer public, click on the down arrow icon that appears when you hover over its visibility status.
When you click on that button, a small menu will open in which you can see the status of the video’s visibility where you have clicked it, as well as other options. What you would have to do here is check Private or Hidden options depending on whether you want it to be inaccessible or other people can enter from a link, and then press the Save button to apply the changes.
