How do you clear the Š¯ahoo search history?

Seach engines store search history

  • I think we know that the search engine providers store a history of your searches. We hear about law enforcement checking someone's search history for the poison and bomb-making searches they have done, etc. etc.But some search engines now do predictive search as you type out the letters. Auto suggestion or instant match or whatever they call it. So as you type .... b-o-m-b-, the suggestions and sometimes results appear (bombay bicycle club, bomber jacket, bomb timers, etc.). You can certainly get the search results you may be looking for without ever press enter. And with some, the search result change as you scroll up and down a list that it has suggested for you based on the first few letters typed. So when/what is the record of your searches made? It is every letter you type? or only when 'enter' is pressed? or the position of the cursor as you scroll through a list? Or only whatever's in the search box when a link is clicked (so you see read the page summaries without that being tracked, but if you click a link, then that's a search 'hit')? I don't know. Could you help me understand please?

  • Answer:

    Yes, every time the search engine responds to any element of your input, including scrolling or typing in individual letters, the search engine will have a record of it. I would assume that it's not going to be as easy to retrieve as the list of your full searches, and the scrolling ones may not be individually correlated with your username.

Xhris at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

Any time that the search engine sends you suggestions, it can potentially record that query, and potentially tie that query to your IP address and any other data your browser sends with the request, like cookies the website has set in order to identify your session later and other basic information about your browser. Whether they actually store this data, what they do with it, and for how long is another question that depends on the company involved; most search engines have a privacy policy that serves as the disclosure for what they collect and do with that information. This day and age, it's probably a fairly safe bet to assume that it gets recorded for at least a little while on most search engines. That said, if you're worried about this, you might try using https://duckduckgo.com/ which has a generally much more privacy-oriented https://duckduckgo.com/privacy than other search engines.

Aleyn

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.