Next time you go to a search engine, think of what information is being made available about you and who might be receiving that information, and what they may be doing with it. Everyone is aware of the issues and problems that are presented any time information is transmitted over the internet, but you may be shocked to find out who is collecting the information.

Every time you use a search engine, there are at least two companies that are collecting that information (your ISP and the search engine) and knowing what they do with that information could be of interest to you. Hopefully, you will not end up like the AOL users who’s information was published by AOL.

This issue was recently discussed by InfoWorld in an article entitled “What search engines store about you” and is an eye-opening read. Interesting highlights from the article are that Google seems to be a bit better than MSN and Yahoo in terms of how long information is kept (although they may keep more information) and that you may want to worry more about your ISP than the search engine.