What Does Google Know About You?

Mark Anderson on June 16, 2025

Google’s “Results about you” feature is a privacy-focused tool launched in 2022 to give users control over their personally identifiable information (PII) appearing in Google Search.

What it does

It will search and monitor your personal info. Input details like name, phone, email, or home address into the tool. Google then scans Search results for matches, and you receive alerts via email or push notification when something surfaces.

You can request removals. Found a result revealing your personal data? Click the three-dot menu next to it, choose “Remove result,” and submit a removal request. Google evaluates it based on policy and, if approved, removes it from search results for all users.

It feels proactive, not just reactive. A redesigned dashboard now simplifies sign-up and enables ongoing proactive scanning. It even supports requests to “Update result” when information has changed at the source site.

What it doesn’t do

It doesn’t delete content at the source: If Google removes a result, the content still exists on the original website. You’d need to request removal directly from the publisher.

It also doesn’t remove all content types: Google may deny removal of content deemed valuable to the public (e.g., news articles, public records) based on policy guidelines.

Benefits

  • Raises awareness: You’ll know when your PII appears in Search results.
  • Streamlines privacy: Simplifies the process to monitor and act on your digital footprint.
  • Empowers users: Gives proactive control over personal data visibility online.

Get Started

  • On the Google mobile app: Tap your profile picture → “Results about you.”
  • On the desktop: Visit Google’s “Results about you” page → sign in → enter your info → choose alerts and start monitoring.

In summary, “Results about you” is Google’s attempt to give users ongoing oversight and quick access to remove personal data from search results—but it’s not a universal deletion tool for content from the web.

100 Tips for a Better Life

Mark Anderson on July 20, 2022

These are practical tips, not life-coach, sage-burning, kumbayah tips.

#33. Cultivate a reputation for being dependable. Good reputations are valuable because they’re rare (easily destroyed and hard to rebuild). You don’t have to brew the most amazing coffee if your customers know the coffee will always be hot.

Full Story at LessWrong→

Every Jim Carrey Performance, Ranked

Mark Anderson on February 17, 2020

Although I don’t really agree with the rankings, I am a huge Jim Carrey fan. Me, Myself & Irene at number 20? Pfft.

Jim Carrey was both a phenom and a late-career bloomer. He dropped out of high school to work both as a janitor — his family was briefly homeless and relying on his salary — and as a stand-up comedian; he was opening for Rodney Dangerfield and touring his home country of Canada before he was old enough to vote. But then he moved to Hollywood, and despite some bit roles (Earth Girls Are Easy, one of Nicolas Cage’s buddies in Peggy Sue Got Married, an Axl Rose lip-syncing rock star in The Dead Pool), it never really came together for him. But he stuck with it — famously writing himself in 1985 a postdated $10 million check ten years in the future for “acting services rendered” — and after landing on In Living Color, he bagged a weird little script he didn’t even like called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, decided to rewrite the whole thing himself, and almost instantly became the biggest movie star in the world.

Check out the entire list on Vulture.com→

Digital Strategy = Gravitational Pull

Mark Anderson on November 8, 2018

Thanks to social media, businesses need to change how they think about influence. You can control what you say in an ad, sales meeting, or company memo, but when people connect peer-to-peer, you lose direct control over what is said or done. The new challenge is how to have influence from a distance.

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