“It’s a really bad idea,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “Why do I want to give my information to a third party when I don’t need to? It doesn’t make good sense.”
Surfers must be logged in to Google to use the password-protected service, which allows them to track and return to pages they’ve visited, see related records and view a graphical calendar of search activity for a given day.
Dixon said much of the problem lies in the fact that information collected cannot be permanently deleted.
While Google states on its Privacy FAQ page that users can stop storing searches and remove items at any time, it says the company also maintains separate logs on its internal systems, meaning a user’s search history remains accessible to law enforcement agencies investigating criminal cases as well as attorneys working on civil cases.
“[The information] can be subpoenaed and will,” Dixon said. “If you need to keep track of your past searches, I recommend using a notebook. It would be a lot more private and a lot less risky.”
“Too late,” said Ars Technica editor Charles Jade, citing that anyone who has ever used Google or any other search engine already has taken on significant privacy risks.
“Google already has the ability to track your searches until 2038, the year the Google cookie expires,” he said.
Jade added, however, that opting into My Google Search may be a greater threat to privacy than surfing without the service.
“The concern is that your history is there whether you want it to be or not; and if it is there, then it could be accessed,” Jade said. Google vice president of engineering Alan Eustace acknowledged that there are always privacy issues attached to Internet searching, but said My Google Search “does not have a significant impact on the information that is available to legitimate law enforcement agencies doing their job.”
What’s more, Eustace claimed, the benefits and convenience far outweigh the risks.
“For most users, they would rather have access to their search histories [even if it means giving up some of their privacy],” he said.
Dixon was unconvinced.
“I have noting to hide,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I want the world to see [where I’ve been online].”