Can I Tell If the Person Who Shares My Gmail Account Has Ever Checked the Search History?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #13, I talk about how Google identifies users in an account and
how the web history feature might surprise you.

A history of your web history?

No. At least, not that I’m aware of.

When you are logged into your account, I mean if you’re sharing this
account, Google makes no differentiation between you and the other person.
Google simply doesn’t know. You’re logged into this account with “Your
Account;” you’re doing what you’re doing… Google can’t see whose fingers are
actually at the keyboard.

Google tracking

The real issue here is: it’s important for people to realize that this
feature exists.

If it is something that you are concerned about, I would strongly recommend
that you go and turn off the Google web search history.

I do have an article on it. It’s actually an older podcast of mine called,
“Google’s web
history might surprise you.”

Check out the Google History feature

In fact, if you go out to Google.com/history, you may find that a lot
of your activity over the past weeks, months, or in some cases, years has
been associated with your account and recorded. If that bothers you, if you’re
sharing your account and there are things there that you don’t want other
people to see, then you can turn it off. You can erase it.

What a lot of people don’t realize, however, is that erasing it doesn’t mean
that Google doesn’t still know. This is all information they keep; it’s part of
your account.

The only thing that the web history interface does is expose it to you.
Erasing only removes it from view, which (especially if you’re sharing the
account) might be exactly what you want to do.