Go to an cafe with no camera, use TOR, HTTPS, etc. But.. the thing with search engine terms is this:
1) Look up civil rights movement topics
2) Look at porn
3) Type up names of people you know out of curiosity
4) Type your own name
5) Look up medical conditions
Each search term alone is pretty useless, but combine them all, there's a high likehood of search terms being associated to create a rudimentary profile on the fly.
Consider that the above is a pretty weak example, the better example would be hundreds if not thousands of search terms relating to stuff of interest. Search programming topics all the time? User is programmer. Looking up porn too? User is programmer and porn searcher. etc.
What it means? Google can return programming ads and porn ads which are highly relevant. The other issue is that if you accidentally put in certain pretty unique search terms, your profile becomes very unique. A friend who works at Google could read that you search porn often. Hence, privacy advocates are pretty concerned.
“Sir, calm down, please. No, I’m not looking at your searches,” the man said in a mocking whine. “That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I’ll give it to you when we’re through here.”
1) Look up civil rights movement topics 2) Look at porn 3) Type up names of people you know out of curiosity 4) Type your own name 5) Look up medical conditions
Each search term alone is pretty useless, but combine them all, there's a high likehood of search terms being associated to create a rudimentary profile on the fly.
Consider that the above is a pretty weak example, the better example would be hundreds if not thousands of search terms relating to stuff of interest. Search programming topics all the time? User is programmer. Looking up porn too? User is programmer and porn searcher. etc.
What it means? Google can return programming ads and porn ads which are highly relevant. The other issue is that if you accidentally put in certain pretty unique search terms, your profile becomes very unique. A friend who works at Google could read that you search porn often. Hence, privacy advocates are pretty concerned.
I'm describing the AOL search engine debacle: http://articles.technology.findlaw.com/2006/Aug/22/10208.htm...