What Search Sites Know About You

[MountainLaurel]

For most people who spend a lot of time online, impulsively typing queries into a search engine has become second nature.

Got a nasty infection in an embarrassing spot? Look up a treatment on your favorite search site. Obsessing about an ex? Try Googling his or her name. Chances are the queries will unearth some enlightening information.

But while search engines are quite upfront about sharing their knowledge on topics you enter in the query box, it's not so clear what they know about you. As operators of the most popular search engines roll out more services that require user registration, industry observers and privacy advocates say it's become more feasible to associate a particular query with an individual.

"You should think about what you put in that search box, because it may not be as anonymous as you think," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com.

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67062,00.html

[DrDebug]

1. Don't know whether it's related

Or if it is a something which occurs more frequent, but google now puts a trace back on the search results, however if I change IPs it doesn't

I suddenly noticed that the click was www.google.com/url and then the URL of the search result.

And that's exactly the reason why I don't like stuff like yahoo (and msn does it quite often as well). The chosen result should not be stored and it seems like google does it as well.

I know it sounds paranoid and it can be something which is temporary but I think I'll http://www.scroogle.org/ from now on since it seems IP related...

[crikkett]

3. google places a cookie on your ctr.

with an expiration date of 2038 or something that contains a Unique ID (to tie your searches to your UID).

I couldn't reproduce your problem (getting google URLs in my search results.)

If you google "google cookie" you'll get lost in the results... much fun reading...

[madeline_con]

2. The reason I don't worry...

I'm sure a lot of things we do and say can be traced.But where are these billions of people who have time to fgo through it all?

Keywords seems to me to be the only way to "catch evil doers".

Things like Islamist, terrorist, bomb, bomb making, fertilizer, switches, etc. or clicking on sites that themselves are being watched.