In case you don’t know many search engines store all the search requests, including the IP address, the search phrase (and potentially more) for future data-mining. This causes some users to worry for the privacy of their search usage, as a company might give the information to authorities, or could simply be hacked.
To address this, Ask has come up with AskEraser, a privacy feature that puts the user in control of what information is stored on Ask’s servers. When switched on, your recorded activity on Ask will be deleted within hours.
Will that give Ask a commercial edge? I think that it’s a good feature, but I don’t believe that it will change the overall balance of power in the search world.
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