Google has a page, tucked away deep in your settings, where all your receipts from shopping online are sorted and saved… [I]t includes anything else you might have bought online too (in which a receipt was sent to your Gmail): Amazon, prescriptions, movies, stuff you paid for using Square. And there are the orders placed using Google services, like Google Play Store, Google Express, or through the Google Assistant.
Here’s the link to the page (you have to be logged in):
https://myaccount.google.com/purchases…
There is currently no way to mass-delete your purchase history in Google, although you can delete the transactions one by one. There’s also no way to turn the Purchases page “off” or to prevent future purchases from getting sorted into it.
CNBC, which reported this feature today, points out that there isn’t a clear way to change this setting on the Purchases page itself, and it’s hard to find it to begin with.
At a moment when users are extremely on edge about their privacy, there’s a general distrust of how tech giants like Facebook, Google, or Amazon’s handle our personal info. After so many screwups and breeches and leaks, it can be hard to see their promises to “take your privacy seriously” as more than lip service.
Learning that Google has been sorting out and storing our shopping habits — and we didn’t even know it! — is a little freaky, and it’s reasonable to be skeptical about why it’s keeping this information.
Dated May 17, 2019
Oh FUCK THAT. I just confirmed this, and this is NOT okay.
Even better, when I tried to delete one just now, I got the following message: “In order to delete this purchase, delete the original email from your account”.
But since this was an online purchase, doing this would mean deleting the only receipt I have, which is obviously not an option. So Google is basically tracking this info with NO WAY to turn it off and NO WAY to delete them without completely removing all record that you might have had.
That’s fucked up, Google.
B-B-B-BONUS ROUND
There’s a similar page called Reservations that tracks and stores all reservations that you might have had confirmed by email.
For me, that means it has a record (which, again, I cannot delete without deleting the original email and therefore my only receipt) of the plane tickets, hotel room, and dinner reservations I made for my last vacation. And god only knows what else would be in there if I went back further.