[IP] more on Privacy tip: be wary of Google's "personal history"

[cypherpunk]

feature [priv] (fwd from dave at farber.net)
Reply-To: cypherpunk <cyphrpunk at gmail.com>

The question is, with regard to Google, does turning "personal
history" on or off make a difference in what records they keep about
your searches? Obviously if it's on they do keep records, but if you
disable it or never turn it on, does that mean that they don't keep
records?

http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacy.html says:

"You can delete information from My Search History, and it will be
removed from the service and no longer available to you. However, as
is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google
Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing
purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for
users."

http://www.google.com/privacy.html says:

"Google collects limited non-personally identifying information your
browser makes available whenever you visit a website. This log
information includes your Internet Protocol address, browser type,
browser language, the date and time of your query and one or more
cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We use this
information to operate, develop and improve our services."

The bottom line seems to be that even with MSH turned off, Google will
still record your IP address and cookie, presumably along with the
search query you made. You can block Google cookies to help with this,
and if you use a shared IP address then this will give you some
privacy protection.

Chances are that other search engines do the same thing. For real
privacy, do as I do: use TOR or some other anonymizer, and either
block cookies or use a separate browser altogether for anonymous
browsing.

CP

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