Ask.com To Implement Optional Privacy Firewall By End of 2007

In an effort to make itself known as the most thorough of privacy protectors in the realm of search today, Ask.com, generally thought to be the fourth in line to the industry throne (behind Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL), has announced a feature to be launched later this year which will allow users to perform “anonymous searches.”

The feature, dubbed "AskEraser", will be possible for the portal’s users to easily turn on as a barrier disallowing Ask from retaining any information regarding a search. Depending on how one feels about data retention in a world rife with public observants along the likes of the United States’ Department of Homeland Security, an institution assembled within the last several years with a big appetite but a tight lip, this is certainly bound to win over many Web savvy folk who yearn for anonymity.

Ask.com users will continue to have a choice to have Ask store important searches as reference markers if those users wish to do so, and generally remain visible and trackable. (In some ways, that’s certainly a negative, but in some circumstances a “paper trail” is something that can be useful.) Only, AskEraser will be erected as a sort of user-controlled firewall. If one ordinarily has no issue with Ask’s retention of information, one can of course choose to remain “open”. But with AskEraser, searchers looking to keep their IPs out of storage on occasion - or even permanently – will be able to do so.

An Ask.com spokesman, Patrick Crisp, explained the feature rather simply: “We will allow users to select a privacy setting that says ‘I do not want you to retain my data at all’. … If AskEraser is not turned on, the site will store the search query, the IP address and some cookie information from the user, as well as the URL the user visited before coming to Ask.com.”

While other search engines on the Web have announced their intentions to keep user information secure – Google recently said it would discard the data it stores on users 18-24 months after that data is recorded – none have gone so far as Ask.com in pledging to offer the option to remain anonymous the moment a search is made on its site.

It’ll be a welcome addition to the portal, no doubt, and will be put in place on Ask.com as well as the UK version of the site “by the end of 2007.”