Date: Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Internet search engines: the eye in the sky

New reports show that search engines retain a lot more information about us than we think. Recent statements from the top search engine giants; Google, Microsoft, Ask and Yahoo, have revealed new measures to be put in place to limit the amount of information stored about users of their search engines. Up until now mass amounts of data about people have been kept, such as the operating system and browser people are using, the sites they visit most often, and even the precise results of their searches, have been stored by these companies for an unlimited period for use in advertising and tailoring individual searches according to preferences. In the past some of these search engines have also been attacked for their apparent lack of protection of people’s personal information, leading to fears that anyone with the wherewithal could find out detailed information about individual’s lives and day-to-day movements. These latest moves seek to combat these actions with Google announcing that ‘cookies’, which are information storing files that attach themselves to our computers when we search, would be deleted after two years, and the address of our browsers used on these search engines after 18 months. Yahoo has gone further than this and said that it will delete all information it has about a user after 13 months. Ask has even said it wants to create an AskEraser which will allow users to search on their site but delete the information about the way they have used the site afterwards. These new measures are seeking to restore the confidence in search engines that has been lost by many over fears that their data is being stored in a haphazard and negligent way. There are also the fears that false information about users is being stored, such as the results of inadvertent clicking on sites that they have no interest in. This new legislature hopes to put such worries at bay and allow people to use search engines without concern. The big name companies are asking all search engines to write up shared codes of conduct in regards to the retaining of personal information of users, so that there will be a universal acknowledgment about what happens to our private data when we search online.



Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6911527.stm (23rd July 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6700997.stm (31st May 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6763307.stm (18th June 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6740075.stm (11th June 2007)