More on what Google (and other search engines) know about you

Inquisitive geek Adam Fields asked,

1) "Given a list of search terms, can Google produce a list of people who searched for that term, identified by IP address and/or Google cookie value?"

2) "Given an IP address or Google cookie value, can Google produce a list of the terms searched by the user of that IP address or cookie value?"

The Search author and Boing Boing "band manager" John Battelle relayed that question to a spokesperson at Google.

John says,

To [Google's] credit, it rapidly replied that the answer in both cases is 'yes.'

Link to post on Battelle's blog.

Adam has been posting some interesting related items on his blog, too -- including this post, which explores how HTTP referrer headers can make it possible for third party websites to track your personally identifiable info: Link.

Previously on Boing Boing:
Search privacy challenge: show us the data, MSN, Yahoo, AOL
Can you foil search data trackers with crafty queries?
Google and other search engines log IP addresses. So what?