[IP] Google sends search terms to some web sites...
As I have often said, Google needs an external privacy Advisory Board
like other big boys. djf
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 10, 2006 4:12:10 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Google sends search terms to some web sites...
I just did a search on Google, and clicked on a link to news.com.com.
Not surprisingly, the article I found was reasonable, appropriate, etc.
And yes, I know that Google tracks my history. What I wasn't prepared
for was this box on the web site:
Welcome, Google user!
If this story isn't what you're searching for, try these other
News.com search results for ...:
followed by a list of other possibly-relevant articles on that site.
It took a few minutes of poking and cogitating before I realized what
was going on: the Referer line generated by Google includes the query
terms. Here, for example, is part of a tcpdump trace of a query on my
last name:
0x01d0: 0a52 6566 6572 6572 3a20 6874 7470
3a2f .Referer:.http:/
0x01e0: 2f77 7777 2e67 6f6f 676c 652e 636f 6d2f /
www.google.com/
0x01f0: 7365 6172 6368 3f68 6c3d 656e 2671 3d62 search?
hl=en&q=b
0x0200: 656c 6c6f 7669 6e26 6274 6e47 3d47 6f6f
ellovin&btnG=Goo
0x0210: 676c 652b 5365 6172 6368 0d0a 436f 6f6b gle
+Search..Cook
0x0220: 6965 3a20 5048 5053 4553 5349 443d 3531
ie:.PHPSESSID=51
Google did not invent Referer lines, and they can't be faulted for
using them. They should, however, disclose this in their privacy
policy.
--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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