Activity

While poking around my Google settings yesterday looking at advertising, I stumbled on a new link titled “Account Activity”.

This was new to me and caught my immediate attention.

I do enjoy a good walk through data and statistics.

The report, when you request it, generates information from the past month and sends you an email when it’s ready for viewing.  Major categories in the report include:

• Account sign-ins (see above)
• Authentication Changes
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Location History
• Web History
• YouTube

Resting your mouse over the quick summaries reveals even more details.

So, here’s the rest of the story with respect to Platforms.

A couple of immediate uses come to mind other than just pure fascination about the connections made (and how much time spent online…)

• If you suspect that you’ve been hacked, check out the locations of your logins.  The United States reference for me would have come from my recent trip to the CSTA Conference;
• Encourage students to check their own activity.  If there was any doubt that being online is an anonymous activity, this would immediately disprove that notion.

Fascinating stuff.  Check out your own by logging into your Google account and visiting this link. https://www.google.com/settings/activity/ and clicking on the activity link.

Related articles

• What About Them Ads? (dougpete.wordpress.com)
• Monitoring Your Google Account Login History Can Help Keep Your Account Secure (technorms.com)
• 25 Ways to Use Google (That You’ve Never Heard Of) (rasmussen.edu)