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Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

Your google search history is more like a storage locker than a closet. You don't own it, but you can open it whenever you want and the managers assure you they will only open it under exceptional circumstances.

You still have to trust the managers, since they're the only party with another key. If you don't trust them, you're free to take any legal steps to anonymize yourself when accessing the storage locker.

The problem seems to be that any additional layer of privacy or anonymity is only available to those who opt into it or go out of their way to implement it.

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That analogy implies you can empty out the contents whenever you want. Which is not necessarily true with search history.

A simple Google search gives this, though: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/465?co=GENIE.Plat...

I am well aware of that page but to use a more extreme analogy... that's like believing a black mailer actually deleted the evidence once you paid them. The best you can do is hope they are telling the truth.

There is no way of knowing that the information is actually deleted except trusting them.

When I used to work at Google, making sure things people deleted were completely removed was something people took very seriously. With caches and backups deletions wouldn't be immediately effective everywhere, but it was very important that things people had deleted were, within weeks, really fully gone.

No offense to you, but why should I trust you or Google that what you say is true? I can have my neighbors pinky swear that they won't break into my house, but I still choose to lock my door every day.

You lock your doors because you don't trust your _neighbors_? That's madness.

Companies often face legal requirements that your data is truly gone, e.g. see the European Union's Data Protection Directive. So it's not just a pinky swear -- there is some legal force behind it. (Which happens to be true for the neighbor situation as well, so you really don't need to get pinky swears from everyone.)

Unfortunately in the US it is the opposite. The government often forces you (or at least tries to force you) to not delete it incase they want it later. Especially if you are an Internet Service Provider.

I don't lock my door because there's a lot of people around that I don't trust. My neighbors are some of them. I don't know half of them by name. Why should I trust them?

> Companies often face legal requirements that your data is truly gone, e.g. see the European Union's Data Protection Directive.

Maybe that's part of the difference. In the US you have to keep records of stuff. At my company, we have to keep records for ~7 years, IIRC.

I am 99.99% sure you are telling the truth. It's that last 0.01% that gets ya.

Are there cases of warrants being issued to search the contents of every locker of a storage facility looking for a single locker that might contain relevant evidence to a fairly low level attempted fraud?

1) Whoever does own the storage locker can consent to search (or be compelled to allow search through legal process), and you can't complain because you don't have a property interest in it.

2) Google is like a storage locker where the managers rifle through the contents and tell you what crap you might want to buy based on what you keep in your locker.

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