Ask to allow anonymous Web search
Search site Ask is launching a new tool that will let people search the Web anonymously, the first major search engine to offer that functionality.
By using the new AskEraser tool, users will be able to set their privacy preferences so the search engine doesn't retain their Web search history. Users will be able to see what the privacy setting is on the search results pages.
AskEraser is expected to be deployed on Ask.com in the U.S. and United Kingdom by the end of the year, and globally early next year.
For people who don't want to search anonymously, Ask will maintain the user search data for 18 months and then it will disassociate the search history from the IP address or cookie information. Cookies are small files stored on a computer so that the computer can be recognized when it revisits Web sites, enabling the site to remember the user's preferences for things like e-commerce and sites that require log-in.
"We'll have no way of figuring out how to associate the searches with a (particular) person," said Doug Leeds, head of development at Ask. "There will be no way for us to receive an IP address from a governmental agency and figure out what searches were done by that IP address."
The move by Ask, a wholly owned business of IAC, follows but exceeds steps taken by Google. Earlier this week, Google said it would set cookies on Web searches to expire after two years instead of in 2038. In practice, however, only a minuscule number of people will be affected by the change because if you visit Google even once in the next two years, the cookie will be renewed for another two years.
In March, Google said it would start anonymizing the final eight bits of the IP address and the cookie data after somewhere between 18 months and 24 months, unless legally required to retain the data for longer. Doing so effectively would enable someone to narrow the IP address down to 256 possible computers or users. That would be similar to obscuring the last digit in someone's street address.
The risks associated with Web search data were highlighted last August when AOL inadvertently exposed on the Internet the search history of more than 650,000 of its users.
Microsoft and Yahoo are also expected to improve their Web search privacy practices, according to the Financial Times.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
HOWEVER, there is still a place for spellchecking:
"miniscule number of users" reflects an easy-to-make error which software never misses.
BTW I use ask.com almost exclusively and I like the recent improvements, so the story is useful.
Google made a major mistake with this one. They allowed another search engine to seize the opportunity.
We should all support Ask to make sure that they keep this up.
It will be interesting to see how many people stay with companies
who won't do what they want.
- Ixquick.com
- by Robert E.G. Beens July 23, 2007 1:38 PM PDT
- Dear reader,
- Reply to this comment
-
(7 Comments)None of this is new to http://ixquick.com. Although a relatively small search engine we are considered the industry leader when it comes to search Privacy. As a rule, we delete our users' IP addresses within 48 hrs and do NOT store any unique user ID cookies.
This has been our practice since June 2006, when we became the world's first search engine to take this pioneering step.
You can find more information on Ixquick and our privacy policy at:
http://us.ixquick.com/eng/protect_privacy.html
http://us.ixquick.com/eng/privacy-policy.html
Please feel free to contact us for additional information.
Sincerely,
Robert E.G. Beens
CEO Ixquick.com