July 21, 2007

Privatizing the Cookie Monster

As Ars Technica explores Ask.com to offer anonymous search with AskEraser, it's clear that privacy is the big issue, but there's more wishes for Google according to John Dowdell.

Update: John Dowdell clarifies that the real privacy issue is cross-site ad-tracking (and I'd add surveillance databases), and answers the search engine marketeer's kiddie porn threat if privacy has primacy:
It seems like that problem might be handled more simply and specifically by not indexing kiddie porn in the first place, and then not accepting searches on those terms... they wouldn't actually need to first satisfy those search requests and then log everybody else's search terms for accountability.

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