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Privacy & Terms

Google

Privacy & Terms

This is an archived version of our Privacy Policy. View the current version or all past versions.

Privacy Policy

Last modified: December 18, 2017 May 25, 2018 (view archived versions)

There are many different ways you can use our services – to search for and share information, to communicate with other people or to create new content. When you share information with us, for example by creating a Google Account, we can make those services even better – to show you more relevant search results and ads, to help you connect with people or to make sharing with others quicker and easier. As you use our services, we want you to be clear how we’re using information and the ways in which you can protect your privacy.

Our Privacy Policy explains:

  • What information we collect and why we collect it.
  • How we use that information.
  • The choices we offer, including how to access and update information.

We’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible, but if you’re not familiar with terms like cookies, IP addresses, pixel tags and browsers, then read about these key terms first. Your privacy matters to Google so whether you are new to Google or a long-time user, please do take the time to get to know our practices – and if you have any questions contact us.

When you use our services, you’re trusting us with your information. We understand this is a big responsibility and work hard to protect your information and put you in control.

This Privacy Policy is meant to help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it, and how you can update, manage, export, and delete your information.

We build a range of services that help millions of people daily to explore and interact with the world in new ways. Our services include:

  • Google apps, sites, and devices, like Search, YouTube, and Google Home
  • Platforms like the Chrome browser and Android operating system
  • Products that are integrated into third-party apps and sites, like ads and embedded Google Maps

You can use our services in a variety of ways to manage your privacy. For example, you can sign up for a Google Account if you want to create and manage content like emails and photos, or see more relevant search results. And you can use many Google services when you’re signed out or without creating an account at all, like searching on Google or watching YouTube videos. You can also choose to browse the web privately using Chrome in Incognito mode. And across our services, you can adjust your privacy settings to control what we collect and how your information is used.

To help explain things as clearly as possible, we’ve added examples, explanatory videos, and definitions for key terms. And if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us.

Information we collect Information Google collects

We collect information to provide better services to all of our users – from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like.

We want you to understand the types of information we collect as you use our services

We collect information to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like. The information Google collects, and how that information is used, depends on how you use our services and how you manage your privacy controls.

When you’re not signed in to a Google Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. This helps us do things like maintain your language preferences across browsing sessions.

When you’re signed in, we also collect information that we store with your Google Account, which we treat as personal information.

We collect information in the following ways:

Things you create or provide to us

Information you give us. For example, many of our services require you to sign up for a Google Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information, like your name, email address, telephone number or credit card to store with your account. If you want to take full advantage of the sharing features we offer, we might also ask you to create a publicly visible Google Profile, which may include your name and photo.

When you create a Google Account, you provide us with personal information that includes your name and a password. You can also choose to add a phone number or payment information to your account. Even if you aren’t signed in to a Google Account, you might choose to provide us with information — like an email address to receive updates about our services.

We also collect the content you create, upload, or receive from others when using our services. This includes things like email you write and receive, photos and videos you save, docs and spreadsheets you create, and comments you make on YouTube videos.

Information we collect as you use our services

Information we get from your use of our services. We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you watch a video on YouTube, visit a website that uses our advertising services, or view and interact with our ads and content. This information includes:

  • Device information

    We collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.

  • Log information

    When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This includes:

    • details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.
    • telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
    • Internet protocol address.
    • device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL.
    • cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account.

  • Location information

    When you use Google services, we may collect and process information about your actual location. We use various technologies to determine location, including IP address, GPS, and other sensors that may, for example, provide Google with information on nearby devices, Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.

  • Unique application numbers

    Certain services include a unique application number. This number and information about your installation (for example, the operating system type and application version number) may be sent to Google when you install or uninstall that service or when that service periodically contacts our servers, such as for automatic updates.

  • Local storage

    We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.

  • Cookies and similar technologies

    We and our partners use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, and this may include using cookies or similar technologies to identify your browser or device. We also use these technologies to collect and store information when you interact with services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or Google features that may appear on other sites. Our Google Analytics product helps businesses and site owners analyze the traffic to their websites and apps. When used in conjunction with our advertising services, such as those using the DoubleClick cookie, Google Analytics information is linked, by the Google Analytics customer or by Google, using Google technology, with information about visits to multiple sites.

Information we collect when you are signed in to Google, in addition to information we obtain about you from partners, may be associated with your Google Account. When information is associated with your Google Account, we treat it as personal information. For more information about how you can access, manage or delete information that is associated with your Google Account, visit the Transparency and choice section of this policy.

Your apps, browsers & devices

We collect information about the apps, browsers, and devices you use to access Google services, which helps us provide features like automatic product updates and dimming your screen if your battery runs low.

The information we collect includes unique identifiers, browser type and settings, device type and settings, operating system, mobile network information including carrier name and phone number, and application version number. We also collect information about the interaction of your apps, browsers, and devices with our services, including IP address, crash reports, system activity, and the date, time, and referrer URL of your request.

We collect this information when a Google service on your device contacts our servers — for example, when you install an app from the Play Store or when a service checks for automatic updates. If you’re using an Android device with Google apps, your device periodically contacts Google servers to provide information about your device and connection to our services. This information includes things like your device type, carrier name, crash reports, and which apps you've installed.

Your activity

We collect information about your activity in our services, which we use to do things like recommend a YouTube video you might like. The activity information we collect may include:

If you use our services to make and receive calls or send and receive messages, we may collect telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, receiving-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls and messages, duration of calls, routing information, and types of calls.

You can visit your Google Account to find and manage activity information that’s saved in your account.

Go to Google Account

Your location information

We collect information about your location when you use our services, which helps us offer features like driving directions for your weekend getaway or showtimes for movies playing near you.

Your location can be determined with varying degrees of accuracy by:

The types of location data we collect depend in part on your device and account settings. For example, you can turn your Android device’s location on or off using the device’s settings app. You can also turn on Location History if you want to save and manage your location information in your account.

In some circumstances, Google also collects information about you from publicly accessible sources. For example, if your name appears in your local newspaper, Google’s Search engine may index that article and display it to other people if they search for your name. We may also collect information about you from trusted partners, including marketing partners who provide us with information about potential customers of our business services, and security partners who provide us with information to protect against abuse. We also receive information from advertisers to provide advertising and research services on their behalf.

We use various technologies to collect and store information, including cookies, pixel tags, local storage, such as browser web storage or application data caches, databases, and server logs.

How we use information we collect We use data to build better services

We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads.

We may use the name you provide for your Google Profile across all of the services we offer that require a Google Account. In addition, we may replace past names associated with your Google Account so that you are represented consistently across all our services. If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile information, such as your name and photo.

If you have a Google Account, we may display your Profile name, Profile photo, and actions you take on Google or on third-party applications connected to your Google Account (such as +1’s, reviews you write and comments you post) in our services, including displaying in ads and other commercial contexts. We will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your Google Account.

When you contact Google, we keep a record of your communication to help solve any issues you might be facing. We may use your email address to inform you about our services, such as letting you know about upcoming changes or improvements.

We use information collected from cookies and other technologies, like pixel tags, to improve your user experience and the overall quality of our services. One of the products we use to do this on our own services is Google Analytics. For example, by saving your language preferences, we’ll be able to have our services appear in the language you prefer. When showing you tailored ads, we will not associate an identifier from cookies or similar technologies with sensitive categories, such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health.

Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection.

We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services – for example to make it easier to share things with people you know. Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google’s services and the ads delivered by Google.

We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.

Google processes personal information on our servers in many countries around the world. We may process your personal information on a server located outside the country where you live.

We use the information we collect from all our services for the following purposes:

Provide our services

We use your information to deliver our services, like processing the terms you search for in order to return results or helping you share content by suggesting recipients from your contacts.

Maintain & improve our services

We also use your information to ensure our services are working as intended, such as tracking outages or troubleshooting issues that you report to us. And we use your information to make improvements to our services — for example, understanding which search terms are most frequently misspelled helps us improve spell-check features used across our services.

Develop new services

We use the information we collect in existing services to help us develop new ones. For example, understanding how people organized their photos in Picasa, Google’s first photos app, helped us design and launch Google Photos.

Provide personalized services, including content and ads

We use the information we collect to customize our services for you, including providing recommendations, personalized content, and customized search results. For example, Security Checkup provides security tips adapted to how you use Google products. And Google Play uses information like apps you’ve already installed and videos you’ve watched on YouTube to suggest new apps you might like.

Depending on your settings, we may also show you personalized ads based on your interests. For example, if you search for “mountain bikes,” you may see an ad for sports equipment when you’re browsing a site that shows ads served by Google. You can control what information we use to show you ads by visiting your ad settings.

  • We don’t show you personalized ads based on sensitive categories, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health.
  • We don’t share information that personally identifies you with advertisers, such as your name or email, unless you ask us to. For example, if you see an ad for a nearby flower shop and select the “tap to call” button, we’ll connect your call and may share your phone number with the flower shop.

Go to Ad Settings

Measure performance

We use data for analytics and measurement to understand how our services are used. For example, we analyze data about your visits to our sites to do things like optimize product design. And we also use data about the ads you interact with to help advertisers understand the performance of their ad campaigns. We use a variety of tools to do this, including Google Analytics. When you visit sites that use Google Analytics, Google and a Google Analytics customer may link information about your activity from that site with activity from other sites that use our ad services.

Communicate with you

We use information we collect, like your email address, to interact with you directly. For example, we may send you a notification if we detect suspicious activity, like an attempt to sign in to your Google Account from an unusual location. Or we may let you know about upcoming changes or improvements to our services. And if you contact Google, we’ll keep a record of your request in order to help solve any issues you might be facing.

Protect Google, our users, and the public

We use information to help improve the safety and reliability of our services. This includes detecting, preventing, and responding to fraud, abuse, security risks, and technical issues that could harm Google, our users, or the public.

We use different technologies to process your information for these purposes. We use automated systems that analyze your content to provide you with things like customized search results, personalized ads, or other features tailored to how you use our services. And we analyze your content to help us detect abuse such as spam, malware, and illegal content. We also use algorithms to recognize patterns in data. For example, Google Translate helps people communicate across languages by detecting common language patterns in phrases you ask it to translate.

We may combine the information we collect among our services and across your devices for the purposes described above. For example, if you watch videos of guitar players on YouTube, you might see an ad for guitar lessons on a site that uses our ad products. Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google’s services and the ads delivered by Google.

If other users already have your email address or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Account information, such as your name and photo. This helps people identify an email coming from you, for example.

We’ll ask for your consent before using your information for a purpose that isn’t covered in this Privacy Policy.

Transparency and choice

People have different privacy concerns. Our goal is to be clear about what information we collect, so that you can make meaningful choices about how it is used. For example, you can:

  • Review and update your Google activity controls to decide what types of data, such as videos you’ve watched on YouTube or past searches, you would like saved with your account when you use Google services. You can also visit these controls to manage whether certain activity is stored in a cookie or similar technology on your device when you use our services while signed-out of your account.
  • Review and control certain types of information tied to your Google Account by using Google Dashboard.
  • View and edit your preferences about the Google ads shown to you on Google and across the web, such as which categories might interest you, using Ads Settings. You can also visit that page to opt out of certain Google advertising services.
  • Adjust how the Profile associated with your Google Account appears to others.
  • Control who you share information with through your Google Account.
  • Take information associated with your Google Account out of many of our services.
  • Choose whether your Profile name and Profile photo appear in shared endorsements that appear in ads.

You may also set your browser to block all cookies, including cookies associated with our services, or to indicate when a cookie is being set by us. However, it’s important to remember that many of our services may not function properly if your cookies are disabled. For example, we may not remember your language preferences.

You have choices regarding the information we collect and how it's used

This section describes key controls for managing your privacy across our services. You can also visit the Privacy Checkup, which provides an opportunity to review and adjust important privacy settings. In addition to these tools, we also offer specific privacy settings in our products — you can learn more in our Product Privacy Guide.

Go to Privacy Checkup

Managing, reviewing, and updating your information

When you’re signed in, you can always review and update information by visiting the services you use. For example, Photos and Drive are both designed to help you manage specific types of content you’ve saved with Google.

We also built a place for you to review and control information saved in your Google Account. Your Google Account includes:

Privacy controls

Activity Controls

Decide what types of activity you’d like saved in your account. For example, you can turn on Location History if you want traffic predictions for your daily commute, or you can save your YouTube Watch History to get better video suggestions.

Go to Activity Controls

Ad settings

Manage your preferences about the ads shown to you on Google and on sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads. You can modify your interests, choose whether your personal information is used to make ads more relevant to you, and turn on or off certain advertising services.

Go to Ad Settings

About you

Control what others see about you across Google services.

Go to About You

Shared endorsements

Choose whether your name and photo appear next to your activity, like reviews and recommendations, that appear in ads.

Go to Shared Endorsements

Information you share

Control whom you share information with through your account on Google+.

Go to Information You Share

Ways to review & update your information

My Activity

My Activity allows you to review and control data that’s created when you use Google services, like searches you’ve done or your visits to Google Play. You can browse by date and by topic, and delete part or all of your activity.

Go to My Activity

Google Dashboard

Google Dashboard allows you to manage information associated with specific products.

Go to Dashboard

Your personal information

Manage your contact information, such as your name, email, and phone number.

Go to Personal Info

When you’re signed out, you can manage information associated with your browser or device, including:

  • Signed-out search personalization: Choose whether your search activity is used to offer you more relevant results and recommendations.
  • YouTube settings: Pause and delete your YouTube Search History and your YouTube Watch History.
  • Ad Settings: Manage your preferences about the ads shown to you on Google and on sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads.

Exporting, removing & deleting your information

You can export a copy of content in your Google Account if you want to back it up or use it with a service outside of Google.

Export your data

You can also request to remove content from specific Google services based on applicable law.

To delete your information, you can:

Delete your information

And finally, Inactive Account Manager allows you to give someone else access to parts of your Google Account in case you’re unexpectedly unable to use your account.

There are other ways to control the information Google collects whether or not you’re signed in to a Google Account, including:

  • Browser settings: For example, you can configure your browser to indicate when Google has set a cookie in your browser. You can also configure your browser to block all cookies from a specific domain or all domains. But remember that our services rely on cookies to function properly, for things like remembering your language preferences.
  • Device-level settings: Your device may have controls that determine what information we collect. For example, you can modify location settings on your Android device.

Information you share

Many of our services let you share information with others. Remember that when you share information publicly, it may be indexable by search engines, including Google. Our services provide you with different options on sharing and removing your content.

Accessing and updating your personal information

Whenever you use our services, we aim to provide you with access to your personal information. If that information is wrong, we strive to give you ways to update it quickly or to delete it – unless we have to keep that information for legitimate business or legal purposes.

We aim to maintain our services in a manner that protects information from accidental or malicious destruction. Because of this, after you delete information from our services, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems.

Information we share

We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances applies:

  • With your consent

    We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google when we have your consent to do so. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

  • With domain administrators

    If your Google Account is managed for you by a domain administrator (for example, for G Suite users) then your domain administrator and resellers who provide user support to your organization will have access to your Google Account information (including your email and other data). Your domain administrator may be able to:

    • view statistics regarding your account, like statistics regarding applications you install.
    • change your account password.
    • suspend or terminate your account access.
    • access or retain information stored as part of your account.
    • receive your account information in order to satisfy applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
    • restrict your ability to delete or edit information or privacy settings.

    Please refer to your domain administrator’s privacy policy for more information.

  • For external processing

    We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

  • For legal reasons

    We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

    • meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
    • enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
    • detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
    • protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services.

If Google is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, we will continue to ensure the confidentiality of any personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Sharing your information

When you share your information

Many of our services let you share information with other people, and you have control over how you share. For example, you can share videos on YouTube publicly or you can decide to keep your videos private. Remember, when you share information publicly, your content may become accessible through search engines, including Google Search.

When you’re signed in and interact with some Google services, like leaving comments on a YouTube video or reviewing a song in Play, your name and photo appear next to your activity. We may also display this information in ads depending on your Shared endorsements setting.

When Google shares your information

We do not share your personal information with companies, organizations, or individuals outside of Google except in the following cases:

With your consent

We’ll share personal information outside of Google when we have your consent. For example, if you use Google Home to request a ride from a ride-sharing service, we’ll get your permission before sharing your address with that service. We’ll ask for your explicit consent to share any sensitive personal information.

With domain administrators

If you’re a student or work for an organization that uses Google services (like G Suite), your domain administrator and resellers who manage your account will have access to your Google Account. They may be able to:

  • Access and retain information stored in your account, like your email
  • View statistics regarding your account, like how many apps you install
  • Change your account password
  • Suspend or terminate your account access
  • Receive your account information in order to satisfy applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request
  • Restrict your ability to delete or edit your information or your privacy settings

For external processing

We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we use service providers to help us with customer support.

For legal reasons

We will share personal information outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation, or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

  • Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request. We share information about the number and type of requests we receive from governments in our Transparency Report.
  • Enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
  • Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues.
  • Protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users, or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners — like publishers, advertisers, developers, or rights holders. For example, we share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services. We also allow specific partners to collect information from your browser or device for advertising and measurement purposes using their own cookies or similar technologies.

If Google is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, we’ll continue to ensure the confidentiality of your personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Information security We build security into our services to protect your information

We work hard to protect Google and our users from unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of information we hold. In particular:

  • We encrypt many of our services using SSL.
  • We offer you two step verification when you access your Google Account, and a Safe Browsing feature in Google Chrome.
  • We review our information collection, storage and processing practices, including physical security measures, to guard against unauthorized access to systems.
  • We restrict access to personal information to Google employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it for us, and who are subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.

All Google products are built with strong security features that continuously protect your information. The insights we gain from maintaining our services help us detect and automatically block security threats from ever reaching you. And if we do detect something risky that we think you should know about, we’ll notify you and help guide you through steps to stay better protected.

We work hard to protect you and Google from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction of information we hold, including:

  • We use encryption to keep your data private while in transit
  • We offer a range of security features, like Safe Browsing, Security Checkup, and 2 Step Verification to help you protect your account
  • We review our information collection, storage, and processing practices, including physical security measures, to prevent unauthorized access to our systems
  • We restrict access to personal information to Google employees, contractors, and agents who need that information in order to process it. Anyone with this access is subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.

Exporting & deleting your information

You can export a copy of your information or delete it from your Google Account at any time

You can export a copy of content in your Google Account if you want to back it up or use it with a service outside of Google.

Export your data

To delete your information, you can:

Delete your information

In some cases, we retain data for limited periods when it needs to be kept for legitimate business or legal purposes. You can read about Google’s data retention periods, including how long it takes us to delete your information.

We try to ensure that our services protect information from accidental or malicious deletion. Because of this, there may be delays between when you delete something and when copies are deleted from our active and backup systems.

Compliance & cooperation with regulators

We regularly review this Privacy Policy and make sure that we process your information in ways that comply with it.

Data transfers

We maintain servers around the world and your information may be processed on servers located outside of the country where you live. Data protection laws vary among countries, with some providing more protection than others. Regardless of where your information is processed, we apply the same protections described in this policy. We also comply with certain legal frameworks relating to the transfer of data, such as the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Frameworks.

When we receive formal written complaints, we respond by contacting the person who made the complaint. We work with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of your data that we cannot resolve with you directly.

European requirements

If European Union (EU) data protection law applies to the processing of your information, we provide the controls described in this policy so you can exercise your right to request access to, update, remove, and restrict the processing of your information. You also have the right to object to the processing of your information or export your information to another service.

We process your information for the purposes described in this policy, based on the following legal grounds:

With your consent

We ask for your agreement to process your information for specific purposes and you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. For example, we ask for your consent to provide you with personalized services like ads. We also ask for your consent to collect your voice and audio activity for speech recognition. You can manage these settings in your Google Account.

When we’re pursuing legitimate interests

We process your information for our legitimate interests and those of third parties while applying appropriate safeguards that protect your privacy. This means that we process your information for things like:

  • Providing, maintaining, and improving our services to meet the needs of our users
  • Developing new products and features that are useful for our users
  • Understanding how people use our services to ensure and improve the performance of our services
  • Customizing our services to provide you with a better user experience
  • Marketing to inform users about our services
  • Providing advertising to make many of our services freely available for users
  • Detecting, preventing, or otherwise addressing fraud, abuse, security, or technical issues with our services
  • Protecting against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users, or the public as required or permitted by law
  • Performing research that improves our services for our users and benefits the public
  • Fulfilling obligations to our partners like developers and rights holders
  • Enforcing legal claims, including investigation of potential violations of applicable Terms of Service

When we’re providing a service

We process your data to provide a service you’ve asked for under a contract. For example, we process your payment information when you buy extra storage for Google Drive.

When we’re complying with legal obligations

We’ll process your data when we have a legal obligation to do so, for example, if we’re responding to legal process or an enforceable governmental request.

If you have questions, you can contact Google and our data protection office. And you can contact your local data protection authority if you have concerns regarding your rights under local law.

When this Privacy Policy applies When this policy applies

Our Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by Google LLC and its affiliates, including YouTube, services Google provides on Android devices, and services offered on other sites (such as our advertising services), but excludes services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

Our Privacy Policy does not apply to services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may be displayed to you in search results, sites that may include Google services, or other sites linked from our services. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the information practices of other companies and organizations who advertise our services, and who may use cookies, pixel tags and other technologies to serve and offer relevant ads.

Compliance and cooperation with regulatory authorities

We regularly review our compliance with our Privacy Policy. We also adhere to several self regulatory frameworks, including the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Frameworks. When we receive formal written complaints, we will contact the person who made the complaint to follow up. We work with the appropriate regulatory authorities, including local data protection authorities, to resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that we cannot resolve with our users directly.

This Privacy Policy applies to all of the services offered by Google LLC and its affiliates, including YouTube, Android, and services offered on third-party sites, such as advertising services. This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy doesn’t apply to:

  • The information practices of other companies and organizations that advertise our services
  • Services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may include Google services, be displayed to you in search results, or be linked from our services

Changes Changes to this policy

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of privacy policy changes). We will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.

We change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We always indicate the date the last changes were published and we offer access to archived versions for your review. If changes are significant, we’ll provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification of Privacy Policy changes).

Specific product practices Specific Google services

The following notices explain specific privacy practices with respect to certain Google products and services that you may use:

For more information about some of our most popular services, you can visit the Google Product Privacy Guide.

The following privacy notices provide additional information about some Google services:

Other useful privacy and security related materials Other useful resources

Further useful privacy and security related materials can be found through Google’s policies and principles pages, including:

The following links highlight useful resources for you to learn more about our practices and privacy settings.

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