A complication related to deleting your Google cookie...

From the EFF's Deep Links... more advice on making sure Google can't correlate your search history with your Gmail email:

~ Your Gmail Email Address Can Be Linked to Your Search History

It is possible to link your email address to your search history using your unique Google "cookie" - a bit of software code that automatically allows both the Google search engine and Gmail to "recognize" you whenever you return to the website. Unless you delete it, this cookie will remain on your computer's hard drive for long enough to be effectively permanent.

While Google says that it doesn't currently correlate email addresses with search history, we know that the company will do so if required by law - e.g., if it receives a search warrant, subpoena, etc. For this reason, EFF strongly recommends that Gmail users delete the Google cookie often.

I've deleted my Google cookie... but there's one annoying drawback: none of your Google searching preferences are saved anymore. For example, their SafeSearch is automatically turned on unless you let them set a cookie. How do you get around this? Do your search as you would normally... then if you see the "SafeSearch is on" link in the results, type &Safe=no at the end of the URL loaded in your browser. This will turn SafeSearch off and you'll get all the results...

UPDATE [2004-04-10 13:42:02]: A reader (kayodeok) writes in and says:

There is a bookmarklet that should zero-ize your google cookie and also enable you to keep your google preferences:

Anonymizing Google's Cookie
http://www.imilly.com/google-cookie.htm

Posted by joebeone at Abril 10, 2004 10:23 AM | TrackBack