[IP] more on BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK -- Google Launches Personal History Feature

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------- Original message -------
From: Trei, Peter <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
Sent: 21/4/'05,  11:31

"W.B. McNamara" <whitney@absono.us>

> Could you provide a little more detail on what elements you feel are a
> bad idea?  With Amazon/A9, AskJeeves, and Yahoo all offering a search
> history feature, I'd argue that Google has no choice but to offer
> something similar.
> 
> With Google only storing history if you log in, as well as offering a
> "pause" functionality to allow users to keep certain searches out of
> their history, this strikes me as a pretty reasonable implementation
> (though I'll admit that I've only played with it a very little bit).

Google retains logs of *every* query. I refer you to the following
NYT story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/technology/circuits/28goog.html

It's far from clear if 'pause' actually stops logging, or just
marks any queries made as 'not to be returned in History'.

Google also places tracking cookies on your machine, and
presumably uses them to identify the queries of a given
user.

If you setup some google service which requires you to identify
yourself, that cookie can be used to link all of your queries
to your identity.

At that point, the privacy implications become immense. While
some will always respond 'If you have done nothing wrong, why
would you want to hide?', in the real world, there are many,
many values for 'something wrong'. Actions and interests
that you, today, may feel are ethical and legal, may by some
one else or at some future time be used adversely against you.

Its a matter of privacy.

Disclaimer: The above reflects my personal opinion only.

Peter Trei




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