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No, but there are rules if you do. (e.g., have to share with FBI when asked, have to delete after X months). Most search companies want to identify you. The pr
by qeorge 17y ago
No, but there are rules if you do. (e.g., have to share with FBI when asked, have to delete after X months).
Most search companies want to identify you. The problem is keeping them from having too many records.
- axod 17y ago>> "Most search companies want to identify you." I'm not convinced they want to do it for any malicious/profit based motive. They want to identify me to give me a better user experience, sure. Being able to identify users searching on a search engine doesn't suddenly mean it's easier to monetize. Google would still make billions from the adverts next to search results regardless of how identifiable users are. It's not related to their bottom line. I guess I just don't buy the conspiracy theories on it.
- mapleoin 17y agoStoring that much data about users isn't harmless just because the company doesn't do anything bad with it. Even if that company would forever be good, they could still have their servers infiltrated into or stolen, or some government could decide that they want the data over night.
- axod 17y agoIf you're looking at risk though: * Computer could have been compromised * Wifi/local network could have been compromised * Your ISP could have been compromised * Some of the peers on the internet between your ISP and google " * The datacenter where Googles servers are And that's before the data gets to Google. I'd guess that the most common privacy theft is at the first 2 steps - local computer / wifi network. Any one of those could happen, someone could be logging all your searches + all internet traffic in some of those cases. Personally though, "What I've searched for" is in the 'meh don't care if anyone knows this' bucket for me.
- y0ghur7_xxx 17y agojust because your data can be stolen in other ways does not mean you should do nothing about it. you could address all those issues.
- axod 17y agoRight, but knowing the risk associated with things is important... For example I don't care much about terrorism, I care about making sure my kids look both ways when crossing the road. Similarly, I care more about individual users PCs getting compromised than Google getting hacked.
- mapleoin 17y agoWhen we're talking about that much data, the risk isn't just personal any more. It's not that they'll embarrass you with your search words from 10 years ago or let burglars know when you're shopping for plane tickets for Honolulu. It's about what that amount of data about a whole country 's population could be used for.
- wizard_2 17y agoRemember when AOL purposely released search data? They tried to think it through and took steps to anonymize the data before they let anyone look at it. A lot of interesting things fell out of it, a lot more then you'd expect. http://consumerist.com/2006/08/aol-user-927-illuminated.html http://consumerist.com/2006/08/aol-user-927-illuminated.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal In the end you're either part of that set or your not. What's bothering people is not having a choice.
- jacquesm 17y agoI have a copy of that dataset.