Ask.com Aims High With Private Search Engine

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

You have to admit that Google is a little information hungry. Some might even say Google is too information hungry, that is why a new search engine from Ask.com looks like it has some real potential. Ask is a big search engine. It might be ranking a distant fourth in the search engine lineup, but fourth is still an enormous amount of search engine traffic.

AskEraser will instantly erase any record of your searches from the company’s servers. Their normal data retention policy calls for eighteen months of retention.

The following passage is from Web Pro News:

Search activity data includes information about the pages you visit on Ask.com, including the terms you search for, the links you click, your IP address, and any user or session identifier.

When AskEraser is enabled, Ask.com will delete from our servers all references containing any single element of search activity data; query (what you searched for, clicked on, etc.), IP address (where you searched from), and user/sessions IDs (who you are in relation to previous searches).

Considering the fact that Google likes to keep their data, this might just have a few benefits when it comes to the security conscious, slightly paranoid crowd and those who just value their privacy. We have seen how personal data can be put to the wrong use in Facebook. Google have been a little more restrained, but it makes some people uncomfortable knowing that there is a record of their search activity out there.