Google Privacy, recording every search you make

If your concerned with your right to privacy Google has announced a new privacy policy that will take effect on March 1, 2012. They plan to bring 60 disparate privacy documents into one umbrella policy for targeted advertisements.

Of course, not everyone is going to be thrilled with having all their search history revealed because it could reveal identifying information about your location, sexual orientation, age interests, religion and health concerns.

You can find out how to disable this feature here - Google's New Privacy Policy Starts March 1

If you visit http://google.com/history after logging into your Google account you'll likely find every search you've ever made, unless you've previously turned the feature off!

Thanks for the info Matt. What happens if we use the "Start Private Browsing" option when using Firefox as the browser?

Ray LeTourneau said:

Thanks for the info Matt. What happens if we use the "Start Private Browsing" option when using Firefox as the browser?

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Not sure, log into your Google account and select private browsing and do some searches. Then go back to http://google.com/history and see if it records your searches still. I don't think it would because private browsing clears all logins and cache within the browser.

Private browsing won't keep a record of where you go on your computer but Google still remembers what you searched for on their end.

Actually it doesn't bother me at all. So google remembers that I searched for certain brand of tire. I don't feel violated, basically the next flash based add I see will be for that company but since I have a flash blocker I don't see any of it. It's great on a laptop since anything flash related burns through your remaining battery time.

I'm using Bing lately. Does anyone know if Bing is a stand alone search engine that doesn't interface with others for information? (ie. Google etc.) Thank you, Trace

I use google periodically, but I don't have an account so am I being tracked? I suppose they could use cookies to associate me with their DB.

They'll track you regardless on their service, but if you have a Google account that stays logged in anyone can go to http://google.com/history and see everything you've searched on. I don't think it's a big issue, but could be a concern if your searching for something you'd like to keep to yourself. In example, lets say your doing a Google search about some symptom your having. Someone else checks your history log and sees a bunch of searches on a specific problem and may find something out about you you've been keeping secret for instance. I guess in a way this is no different than a browsing storing web history, it's just stored on Google's server and is used to push you to specific interests.