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July 23, 2007
Privacy is more than search logs
Privacy is more than search logs: Techblogs are quoting each other today on Microsoft's press release that it, along with Ask, it is seeking to create cross-company standards for user data retention -- the link above goes to TechCrunch, where I found an oddity in the comments. Most of these people are focusing only on search history. They're ignoring cross-site ad-tracking -- that TechCrunch page passes your IP address to a dozen domains. They're ignoring optional sign-in services, where you actually provide a name. Search history is only a very minor part of the privacy risks with the new advertising databases. It means very little until you connect it to a realworld name and address, or a session's IP address, or a browser's cookie. The people commenting on whether search histories should be held for 13 months or longer or shorter -- how many of them sign in to read the email Gmail holds for them, or sign in to upload their videos, or reveal their IP address every time they view any page with AdSense? If you'd like to opt-in to an advertising database that's fine with me, but right now it's very difficult to opt-out, much less have opt-out be the default. The issue seems much, much wider to me than just how long your search queries are tagged to your browser cookie.
Posted by JohnDowdell at July 23, 2007 08:10 AM
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Addendum: Danny Sullivan has seven screenfuls of text (c'mon man, get to the point, "Skip Intro"!!) but at the bottom prints, apparently with consent, an email from Google legal counsel which says that they only heard of the MS/Ask initiative at the last moment, and that it seems more like a PR stunt than an actual improvement. Makes sense to me.
Posted by: John Dowdell at July 23, 2007 08:40 AM
More: Todd Bishop caught the following in a New York Times account of asking Microsoft whether they would be implementing something similar to ask.com's "eraser" of search data, and wrote the following as the reply: "Asked whether Microsoft was considering something similar to Ask Eraser, Peter Cullen (Microsoft chief's privacy strategist) not only said no, but argued that too much privacy was actually dangerous. ... Anonymized search, he said, 'can become a haven for child predators. We want to make sure users have control and choices, but at the same time, we want to provide a security balance.'"
It seems like that problem might be handled more simply and specifically by not indexing kiddie porn in the first place, and then not accepting searches on those terms... they wouldn't actually need to first satisfy those search requests and then log everybody else's search terms for accountability.
Posted by: John Dowdell at July 23, 2007 11:41 AM