If you have an Android phone and would like to clear the data linked to its Advertising ID. Yep, that’s right! Your phone has a unique number that tracks what you do for ads purposes. This article will show you how to quickly and easily clear the data currently associated with you and your device. Sadly you can’t disable or remove this entire system but you can clear the data from time to time.

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Depending on your experience with tech companies, the Internet, and mobile devices, you may or may not be aware that every single device on the planet has a unique advertising ID linked to it. Android devices, iPhones, iPads, Surface devices, etc. Kinda scary right? Anyway, this code works very similarly to the way cookies work in web browsers and allows your activity to be tracked, shared, and more often than not sold to third parties to better target you with ad content. Don’t worry they do all of this for your benefit... You know… To coerce you into buying more things you probably don’t really need.

By now you’re probably wondering if there is some way to delete this number and hide your identity forever, unfortunately, that is an impossible task that cannot be achieved. At least for now. Which brings us to the only viable option, resetting or deleting all the current data that is stored and linked to your device. This will start you on a slate clean, that you can regularly maintain to keep the profile being generated a little more randomised and unreliable.

How do you delete all the data linked to your Android advertising ID? Clearing your Android ads ID.

  1. To begin, grab your Android device and open the Settings menu.
  2. Next scroll down the list and tap Google.
  3. Here you will see a long list of options. Find and tap Ads, then tap the Reset advertising ID from the top of the list. Confirm the change and your data will be wiped.
  4. While you are on this page, it’s also a good idea to opt-out of Ads Personalisation. To do this simply flip the toggle next to the option to On and you’re done.

how do you clear your google ads id data

After you have made this change Google will stop showing you personalised ads so you will no longer see stuff relevant to you. For example, if you were seeing tech-related ads all the time, you’ll start to see random ads for things like pet food and makeup, or whatever the website you are visiting wants to guess you like. Personally, I prefer it this way as I don’t really want to be enticed into buying stuff anyway!

Even though you opt out of personalised ads, it’s still a good idea to revisit this page from time to time and clear out the data. More than likely Google has a contingency plan that builds a profile about you using data from un-personalised ads. So you might as well make the entire process harder for them. Another really good idea is to switch from Google Chrome on your Android device to either Firefox or Brave browser and use Brave Search, DuckDuckGo or Escoia to do all your searches. Stop feeding Google all your data! If you want to really step up your privacy game moving forward, check out our full Android guide here.