Did you know Microsoft, Google and Yahoo keep track of your searches ?

Francis2004

Subjective Poster
Nov 18, 2008
2,846
34
48
Lower Mainland, BC
Realizing that many of us have little to fear about what we search on the internet, have you ever wondered what if ?

What is while you searched for "Jews" or "Muslim" or some other terms we commonly use that could be misinterpreted ? You then fall upon a web site that someone considered "Controversial" and then they ask Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Infospace ( webcrawler, metacrawler owners ) to hand over their search logs..

Imagine having your laptop confiscated at Customs or the border and you have to answer many many questions just because you wanted to post here or were going your work..

More and more it is about to become a possibility..

Read on and enjoy......

Microsoft said it wants Google and Yahoo to agree to European demands to cut the time they keep users' search-engine records before it does the same.



While Microsoft is able to meet the requirements, it wants to wait until its larger search rivals get on board, Brendon Lynch, the company's director of privacy strategy, said Sunday in a telephone interview. A group of European Union officials — dubbed the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party — have asked search engines to purge their user records after six months.


"The proposals are feasible, but we want them to be adopted industrywide,'' Lynch said. "If Microsoft alone adopted the recommendations of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, it wouldn't have a broad impact on its users in Europe because our market share is so small.''


Shortening the length of time that search engines keep such records could eat into advertising revenue, the main source of sales for Google and Yahoo. The companies rely on users' queries to target advertising more specifically. That has raised privacy questions, since search engines keep track of exactly where customers go online and what they read and buy.


Search-engine providers that retain online search data for longer than six months break EU privacy laws, the Article 29 group said in April. The association is made up of data-protection officials from the 27 EU nations and from three non-EU countries, including Norway.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/companies/ci_11172731?nclick_check=1



But here lies the real truth behind what most people will think is a safer internet.. I encourage you all to read not only the top page but the full article..

Google announced on Monday that the company will be reducing the amount of time that it will keep sensitive, identifying log data on its search engine customers. To the naive reader, the announcement seems like a clear win for privacy. However, with a bit of careful analysis, it's possible to see that this is little more than snake oil, designed to look good for the newspapers, without delivering real benefits to end users.


In a post to the company blog on Monday, the company announced that it will be significantly reducing the amount of time that it hangs onto identifying user data in its Web server logs:
Today, we're announcing a new logs retention policy: we'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months. We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users.
Hidden further down in the blog post, were a few more details:
We haven't sorted out all of the implementation details, and we may not be able to use precisely the same methods for anonymizing as we do after 18 months, but we are committed to making it work.
Google's announcement was extremely light on details, specifically, how the company planned to anonymize the records after 9 months. I contacted Google to find out more, and received an extremely interesting reply:
After nine months, we will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs; after 18 months we remove the last eight bits in the IP address and change the cookie information. We're still developing the precise technical methods and approach to this, but we believe these changes will be a significant addition to protecting user privacy.... It is difficult to guarantee complete anonymization, but we believe these changes will make it very unlikely users could be identified.... We hope to be able to add the 9-month anonymization process to our existing 18-month process by early 2009, or even earlier.
To understand what this means (and how useless the new privacy "enhancements" are), consider the following:


When a user conducts a search using Google's search engine, the company stores three main types of information in a log file: the user's IP address (which is a unique network address given to her computer by her Internet service provider), the words that she searched for, and her cookie identifier (a unique value given to every Web-browser that visits a Google Web-property).
search logs posts - Surveillance State - CNET News


Happy Searching..
 

L Gilbert

Winterized
Nov 30, 2006
23,738
107
63
70
50 acres in Kootenays BC
the-brights.net
It doesn't particularly worry me for my own sake. I don't really care if people know what I look up on the net. If some paranoid idiot misconstrues something I look up and causes trouble, I will deal with it then but I won't pattern my life around a whole pile of "what ifs".
 

earth_as_one

Time Out
Jan 5, 2006
7,933
53
48
Your Internet Service Provider has a log of every website you visit. In Canadian law its not enough to prove it was your computer, but you on your computer that broke the law.
 

Francis2004

Subjective Poster
Nov 18, 2008
2,846
34
48
Lower Mainland, BC
Your Internet Service Provider has a log of every website you visit. In Canadian law its not enough to prove it was your computer, but you on your computer that broke the law.

This is not only about Canada.. And the fact remains it could also happen to your Cell Phone, your PDA, your Camera, your MP3 players or your Laptop anywhere in the World as you travel now..
 

FUBAR

Electoral Member
May 14, 2007
249
6
18
What about tunneling software, would that keep the snoopers at bay? :-?
 

Scott Free

House Member
May 9, 2007
3,893
46
48
BC
Anyone who posts on a forum site like this can't be too worried. We're all pretty much marked as radicals and will pay for our insolence come the purge.
 

Nuggler

kind and gentle
Feb 27, 2006
11,596
140
63
Backwater, Ontario.
ZAN: Yes it could. Didn't you know I also post as the Masked Marvelito, but you've never seen my posts have you?..........dang clever, eh.

Really, there's far too much stuff to be paranoid about without being paranoid about one's IP. Unless you are doing something BAD. But, if you are, and realize you could get caught, then you don't care. So you're not paranoid.

Mehhhhh, nice thread folks.
 

Outta here

Senate Member
Jul 8, 2005
6,778
157
63
Edmonton AB
ZAN: Yes it could.

aHA~ just as I thought.

Didn't you know I also post as the Masked Marvelito, but you've never seen my posts have you?..........dang clever, eh.

actually I did suspect as much, but due to the inconsolable crush I've always had on the Masked Marvelito (well jeeeze, what can I say, he's just so scrumptiously.... marvelous!!!) I've allowed my personal feelings to interfere with my professional duty to this forum...

but let's just keep that betwixt us you l'il masked masquerader you, mkay? ;-)

:lol: