Funny, six months ago the then-unlaunched service got Ask the highest marks in a privacy ranking. Now, less than two months in, the service is already under fire. The complaint says that Ask has marketed the AskEraser product deceptively by claiming that it would delete users’ search histories.

As MediaPost quotes the complaint,

AskEraser marketing leads the public to believe that their search histories are not being collected and retained by Ask.com. Not only is this not always the case, search histories are accessible, collected and retained by both third-party advertisers and third-party service providers

Okay, let’s think about this one. In the AskEraser FAQ, it does admit that it may take “a number of hours” to delete your search data—longer if they’re doing some heavy lifting behind the scenes. You know, compared to other major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL) that retain data for a minimum of 13 to 18 months, I gotta say that several hours—maybe a day—doesn’t really sound all that threatening. Especially when you consider that those other search engines give you absolutely no option to not have your data collected and stored.

In the AskEraser FAQ, it does explicitly state situations in which your data may be retained without your notice—for things like legal actions (which include warrants and subpoenas) and technical difficulties. Yeah, it would probably be better for Ask (not to mention its users) to disobey a warrant or subpoena. Right.

Also in the AskEraser FAQ, it does explain pretty clearly that your search queries may still be shared with (and stored by) third parties who provide ads, stock quotes and other on-SERP services and information.

Among the complaint’s weaker points (effectively taken apart by Danny Sullivan here) are that AskEraser sets a cookie, which could be tracked on other websites (and tell people what? That that person uses AskEraser. Ooh, that’s enough to steal their identity!)

Really, if someone is that concerned with their privacy that they subscribe to all of the complaint’s points, they should certainly be concerned enough to read the FAQ page before accepting the program.

Does the average AskEraser user know that their data may still be shared with Google et al.? Perhaps, perhaps not—but ignorantia non excusat. Ask has made that information public and available, and while it wasn’t fully disclosed in most of its marketing, the press release from the AskEraser release didn’t overstate its capabilities in saying “With AskEraser, people can ensure that their search history will not be retained by Ask.com.”

Really, though, wouldn’t we all be better served by trying to take action against the other search giants to protect our personal information? Attacking the one major search engine to actually start in the right direction seems more than just a little counterintuitive.

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What Happens In Ask Doesn’t Stay In Ask

Ask may be deleting the information from their servers, but a partnership with Google to serve up search advertising means that Google knows what people are searching for on Ask.com. And Ask has no control over what remains on Google’s server.

This technicality is made quite clear, a little way down the list of FAQs:

"We cannot delete your search activity from the servers of third-party companies that receive your search queries to provide you with certain aspects of our search results (for example, current weather conditions, stock market summaries, etc.), sponsored search results and other product features."

In short, Google (and possibly others) have access to that information and are subject only to their own privacy policies. Luckily, Google has a fairly good track record on this, even if the amount of data the company stores is unnerving to many.

But the very next question in the FAQ reveals something else: even when AskEraser is turned on, Ask may hang on to search activity data if the government demands it:

"Ask.com must abide by the laws and regulations of local, state and federal authorities. Even when Ask Eraser is enabled, we may store your search activity data if so requested by law enforcement or legal authority pursuant to due process. In such case, we will retain your search data even if AskEraser appears to be turned on."

So, just to review what information is turned over to Google and, under the right circumstances, the feds, here’s a list of what information AskEraser is supposed to delete: information about the pages you visit on Ask.com, including the terms you search for, the links you click, your IP address, and any user or session identifier. 

I’ll get to the details of AskEraser in a moment, but take a look at your RSS feeds, favorite online news source, or even your newspaper, and you’ll see mention of Ask.com’s efforts to protect user privacy. What a piece of PR genius by Ask!

Privacy and security have been hot topics in the world of search engines this year, and Ask has not only launched the first tool to address concerns, but it’s made the announcement on a day when there’s little news from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The end result? Everyone is seeing: Privacy + Search = Ask.com.

OK, so on to the actual announcement for AskEraser.

When enabled by the user, AskEraser completely deletes all future search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers, including IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete text of their queries.

An AskEraser link is featured prominently in the upper right corner of the Ask.com homepage and search results pages – clearly and constantly indicating to the user that their search activity will be ‘erased’ from Ask.com servers. AskEraser remains ‘on’ for searches conducted across Ask.com’s major search verticals: Web, Images, AskCity, News, Blogs, Video, and Maps & Directions – and can be turned ‘on’ or ‘off’ by the user at anytime.

Hype aside, there’s really not that much to celebrate here. Agreed, it’s great that a search engine is giving us the option to completely nuke all of our personal data, but what difference does that make when the search engine in question has less than 5% market share? Not a lot, except when you consider the noise Ask is making with this announcement. With the attention Ask is getting today, you can bet that mainstream media–and perhaps search users–are quickly asking, “If Ask.com can do this, why can’t Google?”

And that’s pretty much the big deal with today’s announcement. While Ask may pick up 1/8 of a point of market share, its real victory will come from being the company that re-started the discussions on privacy protection. You may not end up using AskEraser, but you might want to add Ask’s CEO Jim Lanzone to your Christmas card list. After all, he might just have given us a great present this year–and with the gift receipt, we might get the chance to exchange AskEraser for something similar from Google.

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If the usual 18-month limit to Ask.com‘s search data retention seems too long, searchers can slice that down to a few hours. The AskEraser service announced in July debuted on the search engine’s assortment of web properties.

Ask made the AskEraser service available to users of their US and UK web properties. The company said in the AskEraser FAQ it would delete search activity data within a short period of time for AskEraser users:

Search activity data includes information about the pages you visit on Ask.com, including the terms you search for, the links you click, your IP address, and any user or session identifier.

When AskEraser is enabled, Ask.com will delete from our servers all references containing any single element of search activity data; query (what you searched for, clicked on, etc.), IP address (where you searched from), and user/sessions IDs (who you are in relation to previous searches).

After turning on AskEraser, all of a visitor’s Ask.com cookies will be replaced with a single AskEraser cookie. This tells Ask’s other search services to erase search activity data proactively.

The launch of AskEraser coincided with the search engine’s new 18-month data retention policy. Gary Price at Resource Shelf noted that for people who have not opted to use AskEraser, Ask.com will "completely disassociate search history from a user’s IP address or cookie information after 18 months."

We expect the other major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft won’t follow AskEraser’s example. The data mining search sites perform on user activity represents tremendous value to the engines; they won’t give up such a resource that easily.

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Ask.com will soon be implementing a new product called AskEraser that will make sure that your search history is not retained by Ask.com

Once you choose to use AskEraser, your privacy setttings will be indicated on the Ask.com search engine results pages. You will always know the privacy status of your searches.

Ask.com has typically been very committed to being open and transparent about how your search data is used; and they realize that some people want enhanced privacy–thus they’re launching AskEraser soon.

To come up with enhanced privacy features and tools, Ask.com talked with privacy advocates at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) as part of their process of developing privacy tools that gives use, the Ask.com users, the ability to better control our search experience. The results of this research is AskEraser.

As a result of the launching of AskEraser, Ask.com will be the only major search engine to commit to giving their users the control to prevent retention of their search history. AskEraser is expected to be deployed on Ask.com in the U.S. and U.K. by the end of the year, and worldwide early next year.

According to Ask.com, in conjunction with the availability of AskEraser, Ask.com will also launch a new data retention standard that will completely disassociate your search history from a your IP address or cookie information after 18 months.

There’s several other sites talking about AskEraser today, including:

AskEraser – Ask.com allows you to delete all your search history

Ask.com To Launch AskEraser To Erase Search History & New Data Retention Policy

Ask.com First Major Search Engine to Allow Deletion of All User Search History

AskEraser: Search Anonymously With Ask.com

Ask.com To Launch AskEraser To Erase Search History and New Data Retention Policy

ASK Eraser to “Erase” User’s Search History

Ask.com to Give People Unmatched Privacy Control

Ask.com adds privacy control feature

Ask to allow anonymous Web search

Ask.com to Allow Users Control Their Privacy

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Ask Readies AskEraser Privacy Controls

The AskEraser product offers a straightforward way of keeping one’s search history from being retained by Ask. AskEraser will arrive in the wake of a number of privacy-related events related to search, such as Google’s proposed purchase of DoubleClick.

Search information can reveal a lot about an individual, even if that data has been anonymized, as was demonstrated after AOL posted thousands of search records to the Internet. AskEraser will give Ask searchers the option to prevent this retention from taking place.

“Anonymous user data can be very useful to enhance search products for all users, and we