Google Introduces New Dashboard For Account Activity

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Google Introduces New Dashboard For Account Activity
Image via: LifeHacker.com

Once again, search engine giant Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is trying to make the internet a more enjoyable experience for users. They just launched their new ‘Account Activity’ Dashboard as a way to visibly monitor your activities involving their services.  This new service is available for those who want to keep close tabs on their internet usage and they can opt-in if they want. If you don’t want this service, you don’t have to opt-in.

Andrea Tuerk, product manager for Google, elaborated further about their new service with this message on their blog, ““Knowing more about your own account activity also can help you take steps to protect your Google Account. For example, if you notice sign-ins from countries where you haven’t been or devices you’ve never owned, you can change your password immediately and sign up for the extra level of security provided by 2-step verification.”

Google’s new dashboard program sounds useful in certain instances like making sure you’re account’s security wasn’t hacked into or just to see how you’ve been utilizing your time on certain websites like Gmail, YouTube, Google +, Google Docs, and the like. It won’t monitor your time spend on competitor sites like Facebook, Yahoo, or AOL.

It’s important to note that Google has reminded users that deleting their web history will have absolutely no impact on their reports but you can delete or modify them anytime on the website.

I can see the potential usefulness of Google’s new user dashboard but I wonder how many people will actually use the service.  The issue regarding web privacy using this program has yet to be brought up but it is something that should be discussed, most particularly if you use their social media service Google +. You can, however, authorize or revoke access to select sites you want to authorize your account with and that gives you a little more control on how much you share.

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