Abstract
Nowadays, Internet users are depending on various search engines in order to be able to find requested information on the Web. Although most users feel that they are and remain anonymous when they place their search queries, reality proves otherwise. The increasing importance of search engines for the location of the desired information on the Internet usually leads to considerable inroads into the privacy of users. The scope of this paper is to study the main privacy issues with regard to search engines, such as the anonymisation of search logs and their retention period, and to examine the applicability of the European data protection legislation to non-EU search engine providers. Ixquick, a privacy-friendly meta search engine will be presented as an alternative to privacy intrusive existing practices of search engines.
Keywords
The research leading to these results has received partially funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2011) under the PICOS project (Grant Agreement n° 215056).
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Kosta, E., Kalloniatis, C., Mitrou, L., Kavakli, E. (2009). Search Engines: Gateway to a New “Panopticon”?. In: Fischer-Hübner, S., Lambrinoudakis, C., Pernul, G. (eds) Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business. TrustBus 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5695. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03748-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03748-1_2
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