How To Claw Back Privacy Under Google's New Policy

Your first stop on any check-up or checkout of Google is your Google Dashboard.

It’s where Google shows you everything you’ve directly given to them for use with their various tools. You’ll see most of everything Google is holding on its servers: your Android device details, Chrome syncing data, Gmail particulars, and so on. Some offer links to download or delete their data right on this page, but most only offer “manage” links that just take you to the service settings. Now that you know what you’ve got, head to the Data Liberation Front, maintained by Google’s own engineers. Here you’ll see everything you can grab out of Google products, for importing into other services, and perhaps as a pre-account-deletion maneuver. Not every Google service can fully export your Google account data. But it’s worth noting that you can often transfer your Google data to your own Google Apps account--that is, a Google-powered account managed through your own web domain. Google’s upcoming one-for-all policy switch doesn’t apply to Google Apps installations, and Google Apps accounts offer more robust data migration and backup offerings. Among them are the ability fully back up your account, through services like Backupify.