Comments on: Comparing Search Engine Privacy Policy Visibility

By: 123paul

123paul — Mon, 30 May 2011 11:41:13 +0000

ok, that’s all fine, but, in terms of search engines, who is top-rated in terms of protecting our privacy?

By: Michael Zimmer

Michael Zimmer — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:21:35 +0000

Right, Michele. Ask added the link on June 18, 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20080618205332/http://www.ask.com/. While it was acknowledged in the comments above, I’ll modify the main post accordingly.

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:33:11 +0000

Hey, Mike:
How about you update this page for ask.com like you did with Google to let folks know that they have added the “privacy” link? They did it even before Google did! Give credit where credit is due…

By: Marci

Marci — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:06:11 +0000

Hello,

very interesting topic, and often ignored by user and companies. But the discussion about private data protection and not selling the adress data eg. is coming more and more in the focus.

By: Michael Zimmer

Michael Zimmer — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:33:02 +0000

Hi Amanda – thanks, I did notice that. I’m sure all the companies started paying more attention after the criticism Google took.

Good luck with your research – I’d love to see your final results.

By: Amanda Conley

Amanda Conley — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:06:04 +0000

Hi Michael,

I’m doing some research on privacy policies and stumbled upon this blog post. I know you wrote this a while ago, so I just wanted to let you know that as far as I can tell, Ask.com now has a link to their privacy policy on the bottom of their page. Perhaps we can credit you with that change!

By: Michael Zimmer

Michael Zimmer — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:02:16 +0000

@ eric:

Sure, folks how are already educated and concerned about their privacy might be smart enough to click through an “About” page to find a search engine’s privacy policy. But what about those who aren’t as adept on privacy concerns or the typical design of Web sites? Consider:

1) For companies to claim to be focused on protecting user privacy, they should go out of their way to provide access to that information for all users. There is virtually zero cost to providing a direct link on the homepage to a privacy policy. I can’t think of any technical, economic, or policy reason not to have one there. Forcing people to click through some other page is an unnecessary burden (perhaps a small burden, but a burden nonetheless). If you see no problem in clicking through an “About” page, what is the tangible problem with having another small link to the policy itself?

2) Arguments like “no one reads them anyway” are not only tenuous (do you have statistics to support that claim?), but also irrelevant. When considering providing privacy protection, we should design for the exceptions, not the norms. Consider the scenario where a user is not away of any privacy issues related to searching the Web. After processing numerous searches, she suddenly examines the screen more closely and notices a link to a privacy policy. She clicks it, and becomes more educated about the privacy issues. Without such a link present, these kinds of users would never have the opportunity to become educated users of the search service.

Thanks for the comment.

By: eric

eric — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:35:15 +0000

let’s be honest, how many people do you think actually click and read the privacy policy ANYWHERE (shops, SEs or wherever). so, i think the people who actually want to read, can find it in the about section, whats the problem with that?