IMPORTANT – There’s a bug with Google that may affect the EFF/BoingBoing instructions to remove your web history

BoingBoing just frontpaged this EFF.org HowTo — How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google’s New Privacy Policy Takes Effect

• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-remove-your-google-search-history-googles-new-privacy-policy-takes-effect
• http://boingboing.net/2012/02/22/howto-turn-off-googles-searc.html

There seems to be a significant bug in Google’s Systems that may leave you “unprotected” if you follow the directions.

I had one of the “earlier” beta accounts from years ago, where the login was just the ‘local part’ of the email address — e.g. it was “jvanasco” not “jvanasco@gmail.com”.

When I followed the EFF instructions — and the Google instructions on their login box to sign in with a full email address — I got a message about how “Web History” is not enabled for “gmail”. It was the same message I saw for turning off a Google Apps email for “jonathan@ArtWeLove.com”. To make sure everything was okay, I double checked the gmail inbox… and it was the correct inbox.

I logged out as “jvanasco@gmail.com” and then logged back in again as “jvanasco”. I ended up at the same inbox, and I was then able to see the “Web History” page , which had ‘paused’ (read: ‘turned off’) in 2008.

I logged out of gmail, then back in again using both versions of the account name. I could now view the “paused” web history page on both systems — leading me to think an account update/merger happened.

In any event- if you receive a message that says something like “This is not enabled for gmail”, you should log out then log back in as just the “local_part”, and not an email address.