If you’re anything like me, you don’t give too much thought to your search history. The search engine is such a part of your daily life, and “appears” to be on “your” computer, so it is rather easy to relegate privacy issues to the back of your mind.

But the AOL data leak is scary.

Check this:

“Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield”

No#4417749 is Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga, as discovered, with a little investigation, by a reporter for the New York Times.

So, what if the Google logs ever “escaped”? What does your right to privacy mean in an age where search engines may record your every move online? As interesting as that data is from a marketing point of view, the personal identification elements need to be more annoymous.

Ixquick.com believe they have the answer: “Data not stored can’t be breached”

“Starting today, Ixquick will permanently delete all personal search details gleaned from its users from the log files. This new feature of our search engine ensures both optimal privacy protection and maximum search performance for our customers, since they will be able to search using the 11 best search engines without their personal data being recorded,” says Ixquick spokesman Alex van Eesteren”.

Heh. Can’t fault them on the seize-the-opportunity front…