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Ask.com Announces New User Privacy Controls

Press release: “Ask.com(R), a leading search engine and wholly-owned business of IAC, today announced it will soon be implementing a new product called AskEraser that will offer its searchers unmatched control over their privacy when searching for information on the Web. With AskEraser, people can ensure that their search history will not be retained by Ask.com. Searchers will have easy access to AskEraser and can change their privacy preference at any time. Once selected, searchers’ privacy settings will be clearly indicated on search results pages so they always know the privacy status of their searches.”

  • Google Announcement: Cookies: expiring sooner to improve privacy, 7/16/2007, Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel: “We are committed to an ongoing process to improve our privacy practices, and have recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy. How long should a web site “remember” cookie information in its logs after a user’s visit? And when should a cookie expire on your computer? Cookie privacy is both a server and a client issue. On the server side, we recently announced that we will anonymize our search server logs — including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers — after 18 months…In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.”
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