Will Privacy Sell?

DeeQ writes "Ask.com is betting that it will. The search engine is working on a service called AskEraser that will attempt to obscure the searches a user enters into the site. 'Some privacy experts doubt that concerns about privacy are significant enough to turn a feature like AskEraser into a major selling point for Ask.com. The search engine accounted for 4.7 percent of all searches conducted in the United States in October, according to comScore, which ranks Internet traffic. By comparison, Google accounted for 58.5 percent, Yahoo for 22.9 percent and Microsoft for 9.7 percent.'" We first discussed this project back in July.

Want to keep your internet activities private?

[RandoX]

Forget the delete cookies/history/temp files routine. Get Sandboxie [sandboxie.com].

Not just for browsers either.

Re:results are more important

[Odiumjunkie]

> If I can't find what I'm looking for, I don't care if nobody knows about it.

Agreed. Results are paramount.

I'd rather choose my favourite search engine based on technical merit, then take steps to protect my privacy myself. It means I get the satisfaction of not having to rely on hidden propriety code on someone else's server for my privacy.

To get around the Google big-bad-data-retention, I find that Firefox [mozilla-europe.org] + CookieCuller [mozdev.org] + FoxyProxy [mozdev.org] + TOR [torproject.org] works pretty well.

You have to accept cookies

[Aram Fingal]

I just tried it out and found that you have to accept cookies from ask.com for the askEraser feature to stick. That's not surprising but it seems that you have to give up one privacy measure to get another.

Re:Want to keep your internet activities private?

[Odiumjunkie]

> Forget the delete cookies/history/temp files routine. Get Sandboxie.

That program isn't really relevent to what's being discussed here. Running programs in a sandbox or under a VM doesn't prevent Google storing data about you on their servers. The only relevent thing it might do is prevent persistant cookies between browsing sessions, but you're better off just blocking cookies from search engines in the first place. Sandboxing doesn't do anything to prevent Google storing your search terms tagged with your IP.

cake + eating it

[spyrochaete]

If you're sufficiently annoyed at Google that you actually want to punish them for their query retention policy, I recommend the TrackMeNot [nyu.edu] Firefox extension by Daniel C. Howe, Helen Nissenbaum. It automatically submits a false query to Google x times per minute, obscuring your real queries within a torrent of crap.

Re:Simple solution: TOR

[Odiumjunkie]

> Now the hard stuff is making TOR work ONLY for Google and search sites.

No it's not. You can specify per-domain proxies with FoxyProxy, as I pointed out above [slashdot.org].

Re:You have to accept cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

The cookie is reasonably innocuous, though.
Name: askeraser
Content: "Tue 11 Dec 2007 18:10:15 UTC"

That date might be unique enough to track you, but on the other hand, it's unlikely to be more unique than your IP address, and you can probably write a script to randomize it within your cookies.txt every so often.

Re:Sure

[Jaseoldboss]

"Hey, I forgot about ask.com. Maybe I'll run a few searches through them and see how it goes."

You go ahead, I've blocked them from my entire network on account of their connection with MyWebSearch, SmileyCentral and other spyware.

The only way to make your searches private is to do it yourself. Set the option "Accept Cookies from sites: Until I close Firefox". Then, don't forget about those Flash SOL cookies that all those video ads track you with - Add:

RMDIR "%APPDATA%\Macromedia" /S /Q

to a batch file in "Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup".