3.3.5 Privacy issues

Privacy issues are finding justifications in the way that search engines are collecting information.

When analyzing search engines we have to consider that it is a free product for all of us (in fact search engines get paid by displaying advertisement on each web page).

Each time a search is made on the Internet the search engine you are using registers the IP number of your computer and the research you made.

Those data are supposed to be confidential but some are used for statistics as well as providing more targeted advertisement.

The more information you give and the more they collect. If you open an email account on a search engine your name, address and some other information will be collected.

Until now few are the cases where we got the proof that the information collected by search engines have been given to third parties.

The most famous litigation case has been the one of Yahoo in China which filtered some emails and gave the names of some Chinese journalists who were denouncing facts about the Chinese government. (cf. Kahn, J. (2005). Yahoo helped Chinese to prosecute journalist.)

Until now no mass exploitation of data have been observed and the recent news given by major search engines (Microsoft and Google) are saying that the trend is to eliminate those data as much as possible in the fear of losing confidentiality. (cf. Boucq, I. (2009). Yahoo et vos données persos...). In theory the more information you give to a search engine and the more it can fit your expectations, so reducing the collection of data is in a certain way neither in people interest neither in search engine interest.