I talked at length about privacy when I spoke this morning at the Washington Apple Pi user group’s general meeting–but I realized halfway through that I was keeping too much documentation to myself. As in, I hadn’t remembered to put together a set of links for the privacy settings I discussed.

That’s where this post comes in.

Ad preferences: If you don’t want giant Web platforms to target you with ads based on your browsing history–or if you want to correct some inaccurate targeting–these settings will let you do that.

• At Amazon, selecting “Do Not Personalize Ads from Amazon for this Internet Browser” will stop the retailer from retargeting you across the Web with reminders of things you searched for. But you’ll have to remember to adjust this in every browser in which you shop at Amazon.
• Facebook provides more control, allowing you to set “Ads based on data from partners” and “Ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products that you see elsewhere” to “Not allowed.” You can also see what interests Facebook thinks you have and check which advertisers and businesses have targeted you on the social network with their own uploaded contact lists.
• At Google, you can see what interests the Web giant has discerned in you and opt out of its ad personalization; taking that step will reward you with the image of the sleeping robot shown above.

Tracking protection: If you use Apple’s Safari, you’re already protected from ad networks’ attempts to follow you around the Web to build a model of your interests. New installs of Mozilla Firefox include a comparable level of default tracking protection, as I wrote at USA Today two weeks ago, but you may need to change these settings yourself. Select “Content Blocking” from the menu, click “Custom” and set it to block trackers “Only in Private Windows” and block only cookies identified as “Third-party trackers.”

You may also want to install the Facebook Container extension to shut down Facebook’s attempts to track you on other sites, although I’m not totally clear on what this adds over the newest tracking protection.

Limit Google’s memory: While Google’s ability to remind you of where you’ve been can be useful, that doesn’t mean it should have unrestricted access to that information. Fortunately, you can now set Google to automatically erase your Web and app activity after three or 18 months. You can also take advantage of the lesser-known of option of setting a sync passphrase for your copies of Google Chrome that will encrypt your browsing history, leaving Google unable to use that data in building a profile of your interests.