Find Out What Your Seach Engine Knows About You

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Both Google and Yahoo now have pages disclosing what they think they know about you based on your searching habits, information used to target ads.

You can turn the 'feature' off by blocking cookies or opting out.

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2 Responses to Find Out What Your Seach Engine Knows About You

  1. alan says:
    December 8, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    On a related note….

    Thanks to Wendy Seltzer, I learn that last week Google turned on “Personalized Search for everyone”

    12/04/2009 03:01:00 PM

    Today we’re helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. […]

    Previously, we only offered Personalized Search for signed-in users, and only when they had Web History enabled on their Google Accounts. What we’re doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition enables us to customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser. […]

    How long do you think it’ll take the courts to figure out whether your search history is discoverable? Can someone subpoena your “anonymous” cookie?

  2. Steve says:
    December 8, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    Google claims it knows nothing about me, as does Yahoo!.

    Why?

    Because I flush cookies every time I exit the browser.

    No cookies, no problem. Or at least not as much of one, since I assume that they do keep track of IP addresses.

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