more on Google's new feature creates another user privacy problem

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: hugh-list <hugh-list () thoughtballoon com>
Date: June 14, 2005 2:27:11 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Google's new feature creates another user  
privacy problem


We are _delighted_ do get the hits in our log that indicate what  
Google search querys for which our site is one of the top results.   
Some of them are pretty non intuitive, and make us think hard about  
who our potential audience is and improve our content. We have also  
had searches for potential advertisers show up in our logs, and that  
is a great tool for convincing them to buy ad space.  Any web  
publisher that sees this as a problem rather than an opportunity is  
not thinking very hard.

As for the issue of incriminating material that a browser user never  
actually saw or was even looking for showing in the browser cache or  
server records, the sooner the legal system and potential jurors  
understands that that sort of evidence means squat, the better. There  
are a lot of scenarios where semi-random stuff ends up on a user's  
computer through no fault of their own, but most of them are a lot  
harder to explain or demonstrate than this one.


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