Stepping away from the privacy advocate’s point of view, I point you to a blog post by Patricia Seybold. She discusses, at length, how Google and other search engines are dealing with questions about privacy and data retention. Importantly, she provides us all with a clear explanation of what data she expects to be retained from her online activities, and what she expects can be done with that data:
“Here’s my bottom line. I have opted into personalized search for Google, and I know I can control it. I expect the merchants with which I have dealings to maintain a history of our transactions together. And I demand that that transaction history is private to me (and/or my firm, if it’s a business transaction). I own that information. It’s mine. Nobody should be allowed to sell, mine, or otherwise use my personally identifiable trail of activities unless I explicitly opted in. Not 18 months from now, but now.”