Comprehensive list of privacy-protecting settings across apps.

Privacy is what gives you the ability to share with the world who you are on your own terms.

• Edward Snowden

• Foreword
• Apps
  • Twitter
  • Snap
  • Fitbit
  • Google
  • Facebook
  • Amazon
  • NAI opt-out tool
• Contributing

Apps and web services such as Google / Facebook / Twitter / Snap / Instagram track us 🕵️. This is a well-known fact. While disabling all tracking might be impossible, these companies (sometimes) provide less well-known ways of opting-out of sharing personal data and restricting visibility of personal information. These settings ⚙️ often take the form of Send usage data in order to improve ads? and are by default opted-in, so most users are not aware of them.

This list aims to collate information about all the settings you can disable in order to decrease the amount of personal data you share with these apps. Note that if you really, truly care about anonymizing your web activities, you should probably avoid logging into these apps altogether and use tools like the Tor browser 🌐 and the Signal messaging app 💬. Using extensions like Privacy Badger / HTTPS Everywhere 🔒 helps. The settings mentioned here simply minimize the amount of personal data you send to companies (using options they provide) while still using their products.

The oft-touted rationale behind tracking your web activities is to provide you with a better experience, such as by serving you customized ads. You might want that, and it is your choice and trade-off to make. The purpose of this list is to increase awareness about that choice - to let you know the means with which to deliberately exercise it.

Of course, the way to be truly informed is to read the app's 📜 Privacy Policy.

㊙️

• Profile and Settings
• Privacy and Safety
• Personalization and Data -> Edit
• Disable all (or choose the ones you want)
• Save changes

• Settings (if you can find it)
• Manage Preferences
  • Ad Preferences
    • Snap Audience Match -> uncheck
  • Maps
    • Share Usage Data -> uncheck

• Account
• Click on your name at the top
• Privacy Setting
• Set to Private or Friends (or leave it as Public if you want)

• Control the information that Google uses to show you ads
• Control what people see about you
• Privacy check up
• Disable Location History as reported by your mobile device
• View your activity as seen by Google

• Android Settings
• Personal > Google
  • Services > Ads
    • Opt out of Ads Personalization -> enable
  • Personal info & privacy
    • Shared endorsements -> disable
    • Location Sharing -> disable
    • Activity controls (you can choose which ones you want)

• Settings
• Privacy
• Advertising
• Limit Ad tracking -> enable

• Ads preferences

• Personalized ad preferences (per browser)

• Network Advertising Initiative is (from their website) "... a non-profit organization that is the leading self-regulatory association dedicated to responsible data collection and its use for digital advertising". They offer a web-based Opt-Out tool to stop seeing targeted ads from their member companies. Read their FAQ. However, you might also want to read some criticism.

Contributions are always welcome! We're especially looking for privacy settings on iOS.

Feel free to raise an issue or create a Pull Request. You can also send me an email at .1993 at gmail or tweet at me at @shivan_kaul.