Ask.com launched its AskEraser service across all of the search engine's products, where people can opt to erase their search history with a single mouse click.
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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way to go
If anything, we should be very concern/worried about our personal data that can fall into the wrong hands. ID theft is now a huge problem/concern and will be a big problem “forever.” We do a lot of personal transactions online such as shop with credit cards, bill paying, online banking, etc (although very convenient). Google, yahoo, msn, and others cannot and will “never” have a “fool proof” way of removing/deleting selected data that are deemed personal since the net is so complex and ever-changing. As soon as google, msn/yahoo etc, fix a BUG in an ad-tracking adware/ad spy tool that leaks personal data, a hacker can create another BUG. Ask yourselves this, what does a thief would need to open a credit card/bank account or whatever under your names? He/she would full name, ss#, address, license#.., etc all of this data store on your PCs and are tracked , saved on browsers, servers, etc. It happened to me personally ..Someone stole my Identity and opened an online bank account under my name fraudulently and transferred money from my account to theirs (Belive it) . If you’ve ever been an ID theft fraud victim like me, you would be worried also.
others have to follow or else
Yahoo/google/msn, etc. serve you and other site visitors ads in their email system or on web browsers by watching what you buy, what you search for on the net. This is a privacy violation by any means.
Imagined being followed when you go to walmart or home depot by advertisers so that they can offer you to buy their laundry detergents or light bulbs? Would you be upset? Privacy violations on the web is no different than when it's done in real life.
I now only use on my isp web email system for serious transactions. No web based emails. I wonder if Ask.com will offer an web based email services that will actualy respects peoples privacy concerns?
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