Google pulls one over on privacy advocates

Google Subnet — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:16:25 -0400

Google's shift on data retention that got it high marks from the EU and other privacy advocates doesn't hold water, says former Googler Chris Soghoian. Instead of halving the time it keeps personally identifiable search information from 18 to 9 months, Google is making cosmetic changes to the way it anonymizes the data that hardly serve to ensure user privacy, he says.

Google's announcement of the policy change was "light on details," Soghoian says, so he pestered the company for more information. And what he got was this:

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Cookie

Inbox — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:42:31 -0400

Cookies are tiny chunks of data that Web sites hand to and receive from your Web browser in an effort to capture aggregate Web-site statistics or store your login preferences.

The way cookies are created is simple: When your browser makes a request to a Web server the server replies and a special field in the response header instructs your browser to store the cookie data supplied by the server.

The cookie data is defined by six parameters. These are the cookie name, its value, the expiration date, the path for which the cookie is valid, the domain the cookie is valid for and whether a secure connection must be available when the browser returns cookie data to a server.

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