September '07 Tools

How private is your activity and information when you're conducting an online search?

You may not be aware of it, but the search engine you use could be tracking your searches and maintaining a record of them. Search engines track your search terms, the sites you visit as a result of your searches, the times you conduct your searches and your IP address. Your recorded internet searches could include information pertaining to your financial, medical, employment, political, personal, dating, religious, shopping and travel preferences, and so much more!

Search records can be subpoenaed and used by the federal government. Search records can also be accidentally released to the public as happened when America Online accidentally disclosed information on 650,000 members - a total of 36,389,629 individual searches - in 2006, and that data soon spread throughout the Internet.

While a search site doesn't get your actual name, it can find out a number of other things that, cumulatively, could be used to identify you, such as your IP address, cookies, what's in your browser cache, and what kind of computer, browsers, and supporting programs you're using. For a quick look at some info about you that's readily available, just go to http://leader.ru/secure/who.html.

When AOL accidentally disclosed their search records, one searcher was tracked down via their AOL account tag as searcher No. 4417749. To show just how easily someone could be identified by name, the New York Times tracked down AOL searcher No. 4417749 by using her search terms and found her to be a very surprised 62-year-old Thelma Arnold.

How long do search engines keep your information? Here are the numbers for four of the major search sites: AOL - 13 months, Yahoo! - 13 months, Microsoft - 18-24 months, and Google - 18-24, months.

There are steps you can take to protect yourself from damaging privacy invasions.

Don't put anything in your searches than can be used to personally identify you. When you "Google" your name in a way that includes other information about yourself, you enable the search engine to know who you are and connect your searches with your name. Ultimately this could lead to a theft of your identity.
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Don't use a search engine that is operated by your ISP. Your ISP (such as Earthlink, AOL, Comcast, etc.) already has a good deal of important information about you that you gave them when you signed up for their service. Anything you search for when you are using their search engine can be added to the file of information about you.
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Don't log in to a search engine account. For example, if you use GMail from Google, or Yahoo! Mail and have already logged into your account to check your email, any search you do with their search engine can be connected to your account.
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Refresh your IP address. Your IP address is the signature address of your computer as it is connected to the Internet. Search engines can correlate all your searches by tracking the IP address you're using and then using that to link together all the searches you perform on their sites. For residential use, just turn your modem off for a short time and turn it back on to refresh your IP address. You may still be in the same IP range, but it will be at a different address. Businesses usually have static IP addresses so you'll need to use an anonymizer like Tor (http://tor.eff.org).
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Use more than one browser and profile for searches. With the vast array of browsers available to download, you could use one like Firefox just for searches and use a profile that is different from the profile you use for your other Internet activity with a browser such as Internet Explorer or Opera.
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Don't accept cookies from your search engine. The Firefox browser lets you block cookies from a specified source. Just go to Tools ->Options ->Privacy tab ->Exceptions then enter the URL of the site you want to block cookies from.
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Do your sensitive searches from a public hotspot. Just be sure to use a hot spot that doesn't require you to log in.
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Use an anonymizing proxy. Tor (http://tor.eff.org) is a network of virtual tunnels used to improve your privacy by preventing search engines from learning your IP address.
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Use a search engine that doesn't keep your searches. Ixquick (http://ixquick.com) is a search engine that claims to delete all information about your searches within 48 hours.
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Search Google anonymously. Googlonymous (http://googlonymous.com) acts as a intermediary between you and Google so that the only IP address that Google will see is the IP address of the server of Googlonymous.