incrediBILL - 3:01 am on Apr 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

It's not about hiding, it's about privacy. Those in the US have a right to that.

When I was a kid we had a PARTY LINE for our phone and we only lived 3 miles outside of town, 4 families on the line, 35 years later that seems MEDEIVAL, but I was in the US and sure didn't seem to have that privacy right you claim I had at the time. Sadly I'll bet half the people crying about privacy concerns in this very forum are often voiced by people still using 900Mhz phones (can YOU say PARTY LINE?) where anyone within range can eavesdrop on your call as I used to hear my neighbors all the time before I switched to 5.8Ghz spread spectrum. How easy? Unplug your base station and turn on your phone and VOILA! you hear the neighbors :)

Guess my only argument is why people expect more privacy online than they expect in the real world?

You lost your privacy to corporations YEARS before the internet when you accepted your first charge card. The credit card companies, banks and stores compile just as much information (if not more) that can be "mined" as the search engines and we gleefully let them do it as we run from store to store to adult bookstores, night clubs, gun swap meets and brothels swiping our cards as fast as we can go so our habits are tracked.

Then the phone company records every incoming and outgoing call you make and keeps it for eons. Not to mention the libraries know what books you checked out, the bookstores know what books you bought unless you paid cash so why in the heck would a utility Google makes threaten your privacy any further?

Perhaps it's the fact that the computer is in the house that the sense of "privacy" seems higher but the fact is further from the truth. About the only thing you can usually rely on are SSL communications are usually secure (assuming the destination server isn't hacked and you didn't get trapped in a phishing meta redirector site) and MOST modern ecommerce sites fully encrypt your credit card data although I know some idiot merchants that have the transaction EMAILed in plain text to their inbox including credit card data for processing offline.

I think companies and the feds already have so many ways to look at what you do already that worrying about Google Search History is just silly.

I'd prefer to keep a search for the new Clay Aiken album private

If it's not any better than his xmas album it will be my last Clay album but I digress....