Quote:
Originally posted by serotone9
logs are usually kept indefinitely at the big sites, and they are recording everything they can, too. who knows when the information might be useful or worth big money -- probably sooner rather than later. check out google in regard to privacy, for example (from googlewatch.com):
<snip>
2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation.
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
<snip>
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 150 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.
edit: snipped for context
True, but google does loose info over time. The links go bad or are deleted as no longer good from their data base. I have seen this just based on looking at old links for handles that were used.