What search engines store about you

[lebanese_a]

What if there were a giant database that contained your hidden insecurities, embarrassing medical questions, and the fact that you still think from time to time about your high-school romance? Well, such a data store does exist -- if you've ever plugged such private topics into a search engine.

The fact is, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live Search all record and retain in their vast data banks any term that you query in addition to the date and time your query was processed, the IP address of your computer, and a cookie-based unique ID that -- unless you delete it -- enables the search engine to continue to know if requests are coming from that particular computer, even if the connection changes.

Microsoft Live Search also records the type of search you conducted (image, web, local, etc.), while Google additionally stores your browser type and language. And when you click on a link displayed on Google, that may also be recorded and associated with your computer's IP address.

While Google recently announced that it would make its search logs anonymous after 18 months' time by deleting part of the IP address and obfuscating cookies associated with search queries, Microsoft and Yahoo haven't yet made their retention policies public. AOL stores this data for just one month.

The upshot: If someone were to ask one of these search engine companies to produce a list of IP addresses or cookie values that searched on a particular search term, they conceivably could. Conversely, given an IP address or cookie value, the search engine firm could produce a list of terms searched by the user of that address or cookie value.

Don't worry; be happy

Some people say there's not much to worry about because the server logs don't associate these search terms with personally identifiable information, such as your name or email address. However, if you have an account with or have registered for any of the additional services on a search engine site -- email, social networks, calendars, shopping lists -- it's feasible that that connection could be made, says Brad Templeton, chairman of the board at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that protects liberties and privacy in cyberspace.

In the case of Microsoft and Yahoo, that information can be extensive because of how much personal information these search engine firms ask for on their account registration forms, including your occupation, job title and marital status, and the number of children in your household.

According to Whitney Burk, PR manager at Microsoft, "There is no systematic way of identifying, isolating, or cross-referencing search data with personally identifiable information." Google also says it stores the two types of information separately. However, according to Templeton, "it would be very difficult to make it impossible for someone to make that correlation."

Templeton emphasises that he doesn't know exactly how any of the search engine systems are designed, but -- given typical designs -- there are many different ways that someone with the right access and knowledge could make a retroactive correlation between search terms and personally identifiable information. Considering that search terms can reveal personal information that ranges from medical prescriptions to religious beliefs and political preferences, that's not an association many of us would be happy to see.

Even if you didn't provide any personal information, an IP address alone could be traced back through a reverse DNS lookup to the Internet service provider and city of the IP address, according to Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a blog dedicated to search news. Contacting the ISP could result in a positive identification of the account holder by finding out which account accessed the search engine at the time recorded in the search log.

Last year, reporters at The New York Times didn't even need an IP address to track down the identity of an AOL user when AOL published anonymous search logs of 500,000 users over a three-month period. The identification was made possible simply based on the specificity of the search terms the user queried, such as real estate searches in the small town where she lived. (If you have any question as to what collected search terms reveal about an individual -- accurate or not -- check out those AOL search logs.)

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[Kingroudy]

http://www.vcoderz.com/forum/showpos...7&postcount=83
this is how u hide ur traces on google.
anyway who cares about who?
if u r a terrorist then the big companies might be tracing u, otherwise u should not care, although i found some embarracing stuff in my search log

[lebanese_a]

Originally Posted by Kingroudy

http://www.vcoderz.com/forum/showpos...7&postcount=83
this is how u hide ur traces on google.
anyway who cares about who?
if u r a terrorist then the big companies might be tracing u, otherwise u should not care, although i found some embarracing stuff in my search log

In the article they say that ur Google account is not connected to ur search history, something the post you just shown totally contradicts!!! anyways I am gonna do what's in the article and get a glimpse at my dark history

[Kingroudy]

yeah leb_a u r right, but how the hell would a user's history be accessible if it is not connected to his account. (what they said in the article might be a wrong thought, this is why, in PCMAG.com where i got the tip, they say, YES<,U HAVE TO LOG IN FIRST.)