Google's new unified privacy policy, which allows the company to combine data from all of its sites into a single profile of a user, officially takes effect today.

The company says the new policy will be easier for users to understand, because it consolidates more than 70 separate policy documents from various Google services into one place. Google also says it won't be collecting any new data as a result of the change.

However, privacy advocates worry that tying a user's web history, past searches and YouTube viewing history to the same account gives Google a problematic amount of information about its users.

Short of deleting your Google account entirely, there are some precautions you can take to minimize what Google knows about you under the new policy, including deleting your web history and two separate YouTube histories.

[mashable / consumerist]