Tell Chrome to forget me

September 9, 2013 11:10 AM

One day I signed in to Chrome at my husband's office to check my Gmail. Now, whenever I go to that computer and launch Chrome (he uses Firefox), it remembers me -- I can tell because all of my bookmarks are in the bar at the top. I've tried signing out of Chrome, but it still happens. I considered hitting "Delete this user" under the Settings, but I'm afraid that will delete me from Chrome entirely (even on my own computer). Any ideas?
posted by wisekaren to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Wait to see what others say, but I had the same problem. It's a poorly designed implementation, and worse wording. I chose the delete user option, and it deleting my account from the computer, but not from Google. So, on that computer, it did not remember my bookmarks, etc., but on other computers I could still access my bookmarks. It was a "delete this user information from this computer, but do not delete the user account from Google entirely" option.

It still made me nervous enough with the wording that I advise you wait for others to chime in, even though I know exactly what I did!

Going forward, I don't use Chrome on any computer except my own. Firefox or Internet Explorer won't put you in this predicament if all you want is to check your email and such. Interesting that Google's words drive me to use their competitor, right?
posted by Houstonian at 11:26 AM on September 9, 2013

First, open the Chrome "Settings" page and press the "Disconnect your Google Account" button (in the "Sign in" section at the top). This will not remove your bookmarks that have already synced to that computer, but it will prevent any changes you make on that computer from syncing to other computers connected to your account, or vice-versa. (You may have already done this, in which case the "Disconnect" button will no longer appear.)

Then you can "Delete this user" to remove all the bookmarks, settings, and history from the office computer without affecting any other computers. WARNING: This will completely erase all of that user's Chrome data on the office computer, including data created before it was connected to your Google Account. If you don't want to do this, then try manually deleting individual bookmarks instead.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:28 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

As said, "delete" won't delete your account, only your data on that computer.
posted by outlier at 11:28 AM on September 9, 2013

If you just want to be able to check your Gmail without leaving sign-in footprints: Open up an Incognito window in Chrome; sign in and do your email & other business. Once you sign out, all traces of you are gone. This doesn't import any bookmarks or other personal settings, either.
posted by jeffjon at 11:29 AM on September 9, 2013 [5 favorites]

+1 to Incognito Mode.

If this is something that you do often, Chrome's User Profiles feature is pretty handy.
posted by schmod at 1:12 PM on September 9, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. I'll be back at his computer at the end of this week and will try these strategies.
posted by wisekaren at 5:32 PM on September 9, 2013

Response by poster: It worked! Many thanks.
posted by wisekaren at 11:01 AM on September 12, 2013