Google sends search terms to some web sites...

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

As I have often said, Google needs an external privacy Advisory Board  
like other big boys. djf


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu>
Date: January 10, 2006 4:12:10 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Google sends search terms to some web sites...

I just did a search on Google, and clicked on a link to news.com.com.
Not surprisingly, the article I found was reasonable, appropriate, etc.
And yes, I know that Google tracks my history.  What I wasn't prepared
for was this box on the web site:

        Welcome, Google user!
        If this story isn't what you're searching for, try these other
        News.com search results for ...:

followed by a list of other possibly-relevant articles on that site.

It took a few minutes of poking and cogitating before I realized what
was going on: the Referer line generated by Google includes the query
terms.  Here, for example, is part of a tcpdump trace of a query on my
last name:

        0x01d0:  0a52 6566 6572 6572 3a20 6874 7470  
3a2f  .Referer:.http:/
        0x01e0:  2f77 7777 2e67 6f6f 676c 652e 636f 6d2f  / 
www.google.com/
        0x01f0:  7365 6172 6368 3f68 6c3d 656e 2671 3d62  search? 
hl=en&q=b
        0x0200:  656c 6c6f 7669 6e26 6274 6e47 3d47 6f6f   
ellovin&btnG=Goo
        0x0210:  676c 652b 5365 6172 6368 0d0a 436f 6f6b  gle 
+Search..Cook
        0x0220:  6965 3a20 5048 5053 4553 5349 443d 3531   
ie:.PHPSESSID=51

Google did not invent Referer lines, and they can't be faulted for
using them.  They should, however, disclose this in their privacy
policy.

                --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb




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