Interesting comment re people’s concerns over privacy and search engine use reported by the BBC, Ask rolls out search privacy tool, quoting the TechCrunch blog:

The press loves to run stories about the hidden privacy concerns caused by data collected online, but consumers have taken an ‘out of sigh [sic], out of mind’ approach…. We’re finding that people are willing to pay for the best free products with their privacy.

I’ve thought for along time that most of us don’t have much to hide and the fact that a search engines knows we looked for a new pair of trainers or that someone’s interested in baby products is neither here nor there. Like a lot of others I’ve learnt to turn a blind eye to adverts thrown my way by search engines and to date that seems about the extent of their snooping.