Ask.com is looking out for its users’ privacy. The search engine currently completely disassociates search history from a user’s IP address and User ID information after 18 months. Well now, Ask.com has enabled a privacy feature called “AskEraser” that allows its users to exercise greater control over their search query history. Users can turn on AskEraser at the top right hand corner of the Ask.com site from either the homepage or a SERP page to prevent their search activity data, which includes search terms, clicks, IP address and any user/session IDs assigned to users, from being saved and to ensure it will be completely deleted from the Ask.com server within a “number of hours”. Once a user has turned on AskEraser, it is enabled across multiple same browser type sessions and across search types like Images, News, Video, etc., until the user actually turns it off. You do need to turn it off to use “MyStuff” and “Options”.

I tried it out and hopefully my search query has been erased by now. It’s kind of a cool feature but I am not sure how much I would actually use it. As most compulsive searchers, I have not been trained to make that search privacy choice before so I just search away. It’s an extra two clicks to enable it. I am not really all that concerned about what I search for but I can see how if having your information saved is a concern, this feature can become habit-forming. I didn’t care for the popup asking “Do you want to turn on AskEraser?” appearing everytime I wanted to enable it. I would prefer if it was an easy toggle between on and off. Clearly, Ask is cookie’ing users to maintain the AskEraser state across browser sessions, it would be nice if they could remember that I previously opted into it so I already know what it is, or give me the option in the popup to check to not display that window again.