Erase Your Search History
In a world where the government can at any time subpoena search engine data it's growing more important for companies to think of new ways to protect their users. Ask.com, which has a history of innovation has a neat function called AskEraser. Since the most widely used search engine is currently Google, it's important for smaller search engines to offer such extra features. Ask has always been keeping us excited with features such as their thumbnail picture view and unique search results layout
It's important to remember that all the big players retain your search data when you search through their site. Basic information such as user agent, IP, and search queries are saved. So which company is keeping your data the longest? Google holds on to theirs for 18 months, followed by Yahoo who retain it for 13 months. In fact Ask.com is the only major player that will allow you to control data retention. It should be noted that if the eraser is not used, the data will be retained for 18 months - matching Google.
As well as subpoena's, your data can be compromised in a variety of ways. Many of the terms of service including Google's tell you the data may be sold to third party companies. AOL learned it's lesson after releasing the data of 600k users to the public. This so called "anonymized" data lead to the finding of multiple people who searched for very specific things.
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