CDT Reports on Search Engine Privacy Policies
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The Center for Democracy and Technology has just released a report on privacy policies at the five major search engine companies: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask, and AOL. While these policies have improved fairly recently, more work needs to be done. In this article, we’ll take a look at the new policies, the reasons behind them, and the work ahead.
The six-page PDF is entitled "Search Privacy Practices: A Work In Progress." It includes a helpful glossary for those not familiar with terms such as cookie, cookie ID, IP address, and octet. Those terms are important if you don't know that search engines track your queries and sometimes attach information that can be traced back to an individual (or at least a particular machine).
Let's consider the obvious question: why would search engines track a user's queries and connect them with particular browsers or IP addresses? There are a number of reasons. Search engines want to improve the quality of their search results; if they keep track of the searches a particular user conducts during a session, and what links are clicked, they can get a better idea of how well they're doing. Most search engine users want to see these tools improve; without search logs, the steady algorithm improvement that goes on at Google and the other major search engines would not be possible.
Another reason search engines need to retain results is advertising. It helps to know which sponsored links you've displayed to whom. This point brings us to the issue of click fraud and other abuse. The search engines insist that they need these records to track and fight these problems.
As the CDT pointed out, each search engine tackles these issues in its own way. But everybody searches the web, which is why it's a good idea to know exactly how the search engines handle your private information. Last year's information nightmare for AOL is one reason that this topic is receiving so much focus. Certain very large purchases by Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo also mean that not only consumers, but government agencies are scrutinizing the search engines' privacy policies. Let's take a look at recent announcements by the search engines as to what data they retain, and for how long.
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