What do Google and other search engines know about us?
The search engines are accumulating massive amounts of data about the habits of those who use their search facilities. The data are supposed to be anonymous for the most part but they can in fact be used to track down information about individuals. Internet Week has an article What Google Search Reveals About Us that says
Google confirms that it can identify people who have submitted specific keyword search terms using their IP addresses or HTTP cookies. It also can identify, in some circumstances, the search terms submitted by a specific user. “The list we could produce is of corresponding IP addresses or cookies, not an actual list of people, unless they have provided us with their names by registration” or in some other way, says Nicole Wong, associate general counsel for Google, in an E-mail.
The article describes the way that individuals can be traced
All this information–IP address, date, time, user agent, HTTP cookie, and referring URL–gets recorded together. That makes it fairly easy to identify a Web user unless the person is sophisticated enough to use software to conceal or falsify the tracks he or she has left behind.
What this all means for the average user of the Internet, I’m not sure. But one thing is clear. Nobody has as much privacy as they used to. As I have said before, try to give out as little private information as possible when using the Internet. I like Google but I assiduously remove their cookies. and I won’t use their services like desktop search.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.