If you’ve purchased something online from a store linked to your Gmail account, there’s a pretty good chance Google knows about it. There’s a page called “Purchases” under the “Payments & subscriptions” subsection of Google Accounts showing items you bought and received a digital receipt from in the past. Some of these purchases could have been made years ago.
Google says the information it collects isn’t used to serve ads and can be easily deleted, but CNBC found otherwise. Each email/receipt needs to be deleted manually; there’s no other way to clear the “Purchases” page. Google’s activity controls page also lacks an option to manage that data.
…for reasons that still aren’t clear, it’s pulling that information out of your Gmail and dumping it into a “Purchases” page most people don’t seem to know exists. Even if it’s not being used for ads, there’s no clear reason why Google would need to track years of purchases and make it hard to delete that information. Google says it’s looking into simplifying its settings to make them easier to control, however.