By Rick Rouse

If you've been using the Internet for a while you've probably used several of Google's many services.
 
In fact, my guess is you use several of them on a regular basis.
 
For example, do you use Gmail?
 
How about YouTube or Google Maps?
 
Or perhaps their ultra-popular Chrome browser?
 
Although you probably don't use all of them, Google actually has dozens of popular online services and tools that are used by billions of people world-wide on a daily basis.
 
Did you know you can easily download your data from almost all of Google's services right to your computer or mobile device?
 
Having a local copy of your Google data can come in quite handy at times (such as when you want to switch from Gmail to a different email provider, for example).
 
If nothing else, it never hurts to have a local "backup" copy of your Google data just in case your Google account gets hacked or removed by Google for some reason.
 
So how do you go about downloading all that massive amount of data? By using Google's handy Google Takeout tool.
 
Google Takeout makes it easy to download a single file containing the data from (almost) every Google service you have ever used.
 
As far as I can tell the only services that aren't supported by Google Takeout are Google's advertising tools (Adwords and Adsense).
 
Of course there are probably quite a few Google services that you never use. The good news is you can easily exclude the unused services from the download file.
 
Now that you know about the Google Takeout tool, here's how to use it:
 
1 - Visit https://takeout.google.com/ and sign into your Google account (if prompted to do so).
 
2 - Uncheck every service that you don't use.
 
Note: If you only use a few of the listed services it'll probably be easier to simply click Deselect all and then re-select the services you actually use and want to download the info from.
 
3 - Scroll down and click the Next step button.
 
4 - Select the options you want to use.
 
5 - Click Create export.
 
6 - Wait for an email from Google letting you know that your export file has been completed (this could take quite some time, so be patient).
 
7 - Follow the instructions in the email Google sent you to complete the download process.
 
That's all there is to it. Now you know how to download ALL of your data from every Google service you have ever used (with the exceptions listed above) in one fell swoop.

By Rick Rouse Daily Tech Tips

​A while back I wrote a post explaining why it's a bad idea to let your web browser store the passwords you use to log in to your online accounts.
 
If you don't have time to read that post, here's the gist of it...
 
Allowing your browser to store your passwords is very dangerous!
 
This morning I received a message from an astute reader asking me how to remove passwords that have already been stored by Google Chrome.
 
That's a great question, and I decided to answer it by providing instructions here.
 
Caution: Before you remove a stored password for a site you should first double-check to make sure you know that password.
 
If you remove a stored password you might have trouble logging into the site if you can't remember it.
 
Some sites makes it easy to change a forgotten password but others make it quite difficult (and sometimes impossible).
 
Recommendation: Double-check the settings for your most important accounts to make sure the email address and/or mobile phone number that's registered with those accounts are still the ones you use. If you need to reset one or more passwords you'll likely need to be able to receive instructions at that that email address or phone number.
 
In short, be very careful when deleting stored passwords. Just sayin'.
 
Now that that's out of the way, feel free to follow these steps to remove stored passwords from Chrome.
 
If you use Chrome on a laptop or desktop computer:
 
1 - Open Chrome and click the Customize and Control icon in the upper right-hand corner of the window (it looks like three vertical dots).
 
2 - Click Settings.
 
3 - In the left-hand pane, click Autofill and passwords.
 
4 - In the right-hand pane, click Google password Manager.
 
5 - In the left-hand pane, click Settings.
 
6 - In the right-hand pane, deselect Offer to save passwords and passkeys.
 
7 - Deselect Sign in automatically.
 
8 - Find the "Delete all Google Password Manager data" field and click Delete data.
 
If you use the Chrome app on a smartphone or tablet:
 
1 - Open the Chrome app and tap the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of the screen.
 
2 - Tap Settings.
 
3 - Tap Google password manager.
 
4 - In the lower-right corner of the screen, tap Settings.
 
5 - Deselect Offer to save passwords.
 
6 - Deselect Auto sign-in.
 
7 - Tap Delete all data.
 
Bonus tip: Now that you have removed your stored passwords I recommend that you follow the steps in this post to choose new passwords that are easy to remember, yet hard to break.