Cookies: Not the Edible Type

Caught this at the Vodka Pundit.

Google's recent legal spat with the U.S. Department of Justice highlights not only what information search engines record about us but also the shortcomings in a federal law that's supposed to protect online privacy.

It's only a matter of time before other attorneys realize that a person's entire search history is available for the asking, and the subpoenas begin to fly. This could happen in civil lawsuits or criminal prosecutions.

That type of fishing expedition is not legally permitted for Web mail providers. But because search engines are not fully shielded by the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act--concocted back in the era of CompuServe and bulletin board systems--their users don't enjoy the same level of privacy.

and

Two solutions are simple to describe, but not likely to happen. First, search engines could voluntarily--or be required by law to--delete search histories after a few months unless the customer objects. Second, federal law could be amended to make it clear that search engines, which serve as a window to the Internet, are fully protected.

Don't think your going to see any help from those who tack cookies onto your browser. It gives them a lot of information and helps their business.

Q: Does Google collect and record people's search terms whether they're logged in or not?

Yes. Google confirmed this week that it keeps and collates these results, which means the company can be forced to divulge them under court order. Whether Google does anything else with them is another issue.

Given the Department of Justice's recent subpoena to Google, it's likely the police or even lawyers in civil cases--divorce attorneys, employers in severance disputes--eventually will demand that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and other search engines cough up users' search histories.

Q: Has this happened before?
Almost. A North Carolina man was found guilty of murder in November in part because he Googled the words "neck," "snap," "break" and "hold" before his wife was killed. But those search terms were found on Robert Petrick's computer, not obtained from Google directly.

Also, attorneys have already begun introducing searches conducted on Google, Yahoo and AltaVista as evidence.

It's just a good idea to periodically delete your history and cookies.

It's not difficult to do either. On Firefox go to the Tools drop down menu and click on Options. Go to the Privacy tab and set the time for your History files. Then go to the Cookies tab and just delete them. Disallowing cookies will make a lot of sites not work, so you may as well live with them and just clean house periodically. I tend to do this quite a lot at work, just to ensure there isn't anything stored that may look bad. Especially if you sometimes go to sites that has different content then what you weren't expecting.

You can go and read the rest of the details. It's pretty good information for those concerned with privacy issues.