Welcome to Google Talk

Google Talk Privacy Notice

Redline version: updated February 7, 2006 (view current version)
Legend: Insertion | Deletion

October 14, 2005 February 7, 2006

The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and Google services, including information provided when you use Google Talk. In addition, the following describes our privacy practices that are specific to Google Talk.

Personal Information

• You need a Google Account and a Gmail address to access Google Talk. Google asks for some personal information when you create a Google Account, including your email address and a password, which is used to protect your account from unauthorized access. A Google Account allows you to access many of our services that require registration.
• Account activity. When you use Google Talk, we ask for the same information that was requested when you created your Gmail account, including your first and last name, a username (which will be used for your email address) and a password to create your account.
• Google Talk does not archive the contents of your text or voice communications on Google's servers, and we will not archive such contents on our servers without your express permission and clear notification to all our users. By default, the Google Talk software stores the most recent lines of your text chats locally on your computer.
• When you use Google Talk, Google's servers automatically we may record certain information about your use of the service usage, such as when you use Google Talk, the size of your contact list and the contacts you communicate with, and the frequency and size of data transfers. Information displayed or clicked on in the Google Talk interface (including UI elements, settings, and other information) is also recorded. We delete personal information from the Google Talk logs after a period of time reasonably necessary to do so.
• Content. You may choose to store the contents of text chats as Gmail messages in your Gmail account. (See "Your choices," below, for more information.)

Uses

• Google maintains and processes your We use this information internally to deliver the best possible service to you, such as improving the Google Talk user interface and maintaining a consistent and reliable user experience.
• On a regular basis, we delete activity information associated with your account.
• When you use Google Talk, people included you have chosen to include in your contact list may be able to see your online presence, username, Gmail address, and any information that you choose to add to your profile, including images, links, and custom status indicators.
• We may relay content for users in some cases.

Your choices

• You can change your Google Talk account settings at any time in the "Settings" section of Google Talk. You may, for example, modify your online presence status or block particular users through the user interface. For more information about contact lists and online presence, please visit the Google Talk Help Center. In addition, you can change your account settings to disable the storage of the most recent lines of text chats locally on your computer.
• You can choose whether to store text chats in your Gmail account. During a particular chat, you can go off the record with your conversation. This means that you can prevent the person you are chatting with from automatically storing the chat as a message in his or her Gmail account. This feature does not prevent that person from copying and pasting text chats or otherwise manually recording them. Also, the feature is available only if both you and the other person are using the Google Talk client, Google Talk in Gmail, or a third-party client that enables this feature.
• You can uninstall the Google Talk software at any time through the "Add or Remove Programs" Control Panel. When you uninstall the software, Google Talk and its copies of all items, including text chats saved locally, are deleted from your computer. Your other files and applications remain unaffected. You may delete your contacts information or chat histories you have stored in your Gmail account by deleting them through Gmail or by deleting your Gmail account from the Google Accounts page. Because of the way we maintain this service, such deletion may not be immediate, and residual copies may remain in our offline on backup systems media. For more information about Gmail, please see the Gmail Help Center and Privacy Notice.

More information

Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor privacy principles. For more information about the Safe Harbor framework or our registration, see the Department of Commerce's web site.

Further information about Google Talk is available here.

For more information about our privacy practices, go to the full privacy policy. If you have additional questions, please contact us any time. Or write to us at:

Privacy Matters
c/o Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043 (USA)