| Privacy in Forms

How do I know a form does not identify me?

Let's start with an important distinction: Signing into Google vs. being identified to a form owner.

In your day-to-day job, you are signed into your Google account in order to use Gmail or Chat. This happens via your browser. When you encounter a Google Form, you are still signed in. Unless you browse anonymously on purpose, this will always be active - but Google doesn't store (or pass on) your identity, more on this later.

Some features in Google Forms even require that you be signed into Google. Forms that only accept a single answer per person are a good example, or forms that are restricted to your company.

Being signed in to Google Forms also brings you features: It saves your partially completed forms to your account, so you can finish very long forms later (even on different devices). You need to know which account you're using for that. Hence, your account is displayed.

In short, when it says you@company.com (not shared) , you are signed in to Google for technical reasons. You are not identified to the form owner.

Which forms reveal my identity?

Now, the form owner can identify you if they want.

If a form identifies you, the very first question will be an email question. It can either be a checkbox to conveniently submit the email you are logged in with, or a free-text box to enter any email address. In any case, you are volunteering that information and cannot send the form without taking action.

(This is a welcome change. Earlier versions of Forms said that "your email address will be shared". Now you need to consent.)

Finally, people can insert questions such as "What's your first and last name" or "What's your employee number" and those would identify you too.

How can I configure email collection for my form?

It's under Settings > Responses > Collect Email addresses. The default is "Do not collect". 

Go ahead and enable the features you need. A word of advice: Try to collect as little information as possible and stay away from identifying people if you can, even voluntarily. Whenever the words "it might be handy" creep into your head, stop yourself and remember your data privacy training. You will end up with less responses, may have to delete your data or worse.