Privacy Digest

Ask.com's Privacy Tool Tracks Users, Groups Tell Feds - Via Threat Level:

A coalition of privacy groups filed a federal complaint Saturday against Ask.com, alleging that AskEraser - the company's recently unveiled search engine history anonymization tool - doesn't actually protect users' privacy and could be used to track people when they thought they were anonymous.

The groups, which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are asking the Federal Trade Commission to find that Ask.com is engaged in unfair trade practices by making false promises to users. The groups want the FTC to force the company to modify the program.

Specifically, the groups charge that even when the search anonymization tool is turned on, Ask.com's advertising partners -- which include Google -- are able to see and store search terms and identifiers that tie a search to an individual.

Ask.com hoped its history erasing tool would make it the privacy leader for search engines, which have only reluctantly begun loosening their hold on user data as they face increasing scrutiny from government regulators around the world.

But the limitations of Ask's privacy offering were immediately noticed by the press and privacy groups.

Ask Eraser, which can be turned on and off from Ask.com's main screen, lets individuals tell the search engine to forget. Search engines generally hang on to such data for more than a year in order to serve relevant ads and to try to make search results more personal.

Ask's tool relies on a permanent cookie on a user's computer that the company's servers rely on to know when to delete search terms. The complaint alleges that Ask Eraser's cookie requirement means that privacy-conscious users will have to turn off cookie blocking - a common, but brute force, way of ensuring online privacy.

Moreover, the groups argue that cookie includes a time stamp down to the second, which could be used as a unique identifier.

According to the complaint (.pdf):

The use of the AskEraser opt-out cookie provides a Persistent Identifier that allows any government agency to whom Ask.com conveys the search query and the associated cookie, whether intentionally or by other mean, to track and monitor the user with the search query for as long as the user continues to use the AskEraser service.

The Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Action, along with three other groups, also signed the complaint.

The groups first aired their concerns about the tool in a letter (.pdf) to Ask.com on December 20, and filed the complaint a month later since the company hadn't made the requested changes, according to EPIC senior staff attorney Melissa Ngo.

Ask.com did not immediately return a call for comment.

CC Photo: Blmurch

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)