Privacy
Searches made by search engines, including Google, leave traces, raising concerns about privacy but sometimes facilitating the administration of justice; murderers have been detected and convicted as a result of incriminating searches they made such as "tips with killing with a baseball bat".
A search can be traced in several ways. When using a search engine through a browser program on a computer, search terms and other information will usually be stored on the computer by default, unless steps are taken to erase them. An Internet Service Provider may store records which relate search terms to an IP address and a time. The search engine provider (e.g., Google) may keep logs with the same information. Whether such logs are kept, and access to them by law enforcement agencies, is subject to legislation and working practices; the law may mandate, prohibit, or say nothing about logging of various types of information.
The technically knowledgeable and forewarned user can avoid leaving traces.
Read more about this topic: Google Search
Famous quotes containing the word privacy:
“There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.”
—Robert Bly (b. 1926)
“Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.”
—Sir Edmund Leach (20th century)
“A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he’s in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.”
—Bill Cosby (20th century)