With the majority of people using search engines on a daily basis, you can’t help but wonder how much privacy you have when you search. In fact, this survey conducted has really revealed some interesting things when it comes to how search engines use your information. While this conducted survey does not cover all of the search engines, it does cover all of the major ones. If you use any of the major search engines, it may be in your best interest to see how they answered the questions in this survey.

Trying to learn how your favorite search engine protects your privacy can be as frustrating as a Where’s Waldo book: it’s not easy to find what you’re looking for, and doing it on multiple sites is even more irksome.

To help our readers evaluate the privacy differences between AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, CNET News.com sent them a survey on August 6. We’ve published their answers–in the companies’ own words–below.

In some cases, we asked follow-up questions for clarification. If you have any suggestions for a future survey, send them along. And for background, here’s a similar survey we did last year.

AOL

Here are responses from Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Time Warner’s AOL Internet unit, which apologized a year ago for inadvertently exposing the Web searches made by a large group of users. The company retains personally identifiable Web search histories for up to 30 days, after which time the identifying information is obscured using a hashing technique, Call said. It also announced last month that it would buy Tacoda, which delivers behavioral targeted ads.[more]

Tags: Privacy