As Google keeps on losing the battle against the other engines when it comes to online privacy, they decided to put up a video on YouTube which, while accurate, spin things their way and make them look much better, at least in the eyes of those who don’t know much about it.

PCWORLD wrote about this video:
The video is clear and accurate, but it’s of course meant to make Google look good, so take it with a grain of salt. The engineer giving the presentation downplays what it means to tie searches together with an IP address and (more importantly) a …read more

Last week CNET News.com sent 8 questions to each search engine in an attempt to rank them based on their own observation of themselves. This is in an attempt to help people understand the different policies used by each engine on specific issues. The engines included AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo and the questions asked included:

What search-related data–including IP addresses, cookie IDs, user identities, and search terms–do you retain?
How long do you retain those data?
If you retain data for a limited period of time, is it completely deleted (in such a way that the data and backups cannot …read more

In response to recent privacy concerns Yahoo decided to alter their data retention policy and make all logged data older than 13 months anonymous. This is unlike Google who limited their cookie’s lifespan to 18 months but maintains all logged references.
This new mentioned policy is to be implemented “by the end of the year” and with no specific date mentioned.
[via WIRED]

As ASK is getting ready for the launch of ASKEraser, its anonymous search tool due out soon, it joined forces with MSN in an effort to create an “industry standard” to better protect consumer privacy. The two, who are more of the “market followers” in the industry joined yesterday and proposed a project which would “bring together businesses, advocacy groups and academics to develop a set of guiding principles that would help alert users when their online behavior is being tracked and for how long that information is retained.”
Privacy issues became public concern with Google’s planned acquisition of DoubleClick and …read more

While Google keeps on getting more and more hear for insisting on keeping surfer’s information infinitely (in Internet terms at least), ASK seems to have gotten the picture and announced today a new search tool which will forget about you altogether, Sort of like “10 Second Tom” from 50 First Dates…
The new tool, called AskEraser will offer users complete control over their privacy when searching for information: With AskEraser, people can ensure that their search history will not be retained by Ask.com. Searchers will have easy access to AskEraser and can change their privacy preference at any time. Once …read more

In a response to the many accusation of privacy issues on the Google platform, Google decided to shorten its cookie lifetime from year 2038 to 18 months. This cookie, labeled by Google as the “PREF cookie” is in charge of remembering our personal preferences such as language, amount of results in each SERP, SafeSearch, etc.
From the official announcement:
In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have …read more

Last week the Privacy International released a study accusing Google of having the “worst privacy” out of all major sites. and before that the European Union released Article 29 Working Party addressing the same issues. The initial response from Google was a statement discounting the accuracy of the study and its findings.
A week later, however, it appears as if Google had made some moves this week to improve some of the issues that were addresses in the report:
* Lower data retention period – While initially storing all information for 24 months Google announced this week that it will lower …read more

When working with search engines and SEO, it is important to get the cleanest SERPS possible in order to evaluate your work correctly. These SERPS may get seriously skewed due to personalized search reacting to one’s search patterns. While this can be done simply by logging out of Google, it may be a pain in the arse for Adwords/Gmail/Youtube users who may want to retain their ability to stay logged in.
In last week’s SMX show Matt Cutts commented on the issue offering a quick fix, the addition of the variable &pws=0 to the search query. So this way a query …read more

A recent study published by Privacy International says it “found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google’s approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations” and labels Google as an “endemic threat to privacy“. According to the study, this “status” was achieved due to its product diversity and their ability to extract and share information between these products.
The study lists the following sample of “issues” found with Google’s policies:
* Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google’s services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an …read more