CreditLock.com

Google announced Monday that it will reduce the lifespan of "Cookies" from 30 years to 2 years. Such Cookies are small files planted on the computers of consumers, primarily tracking internet use and recognizing users' preferences. Such move will somewhat improve consumers' privacy.

Identity Theft, which can be exacerbated by cookies associated with Malware programs that infiltrate computers of unaware consumers, can possibly be reduced if Internet Browsing was totally anonymous; however It is highly unlikely that Internet Browsing will ever be totally anonymous for two main reasons. First, technologically speaking, 100% anonymity is practically impossible. Second, existence of search engine companies, such as Google, would be financially jeopardized.

On the surface, Google's announcement may seem as a drastic measure, cutting the lifespan of its cookies by more than 93%. Google also announced that the new 2-year lifespan will automatically renew every time you use Google. How likely is it that a computer user would use Google one day, and not use Google again for more than two years? Highly unlikely.... In June 2007, Google had a search market share of as much as 62.7%. Such massive market share could imply that it is extremely unlikely that a Google user would refrain from using Google for 2 years. Hence, it seems Google cookies will most likely continue renewing forever for most internet users.

Despite such renewing feature, we do believe that Google is genuine in wanting to protect consumers' privacy. From the outset, Google was founded on a publicly friendly basis. When Google became public, the Initial Public Offering of its shares (IPO), to the dismay of many Wall Street Firms (and possibly to the initial financial disadvantage of its founders), was made available to most of the general public, as opposed to being limited to the privileged few.... Furthermore, in January 2006, it was reported by The New York Times that Google was the only major search engine company to resist a subpoena issued in August 2005, by the Justice Department, asking Google and other search engines to turn over records of Millions of search queries.

Protecting consumers' privacy 100%, whereby they can browse the internet totally anonymously, is technologically impossible. From a technology perspective, when a consumer enters a query into his browser, if the browser is incapable of recognizing the source of the request, it would be impossible to route the answer to the query back to the user. In other words, if you were to call someone, and ask them to return your call, how can they return your call if they do not know your phone number?

There are services that are marketed as providing anonymous browsing. Many such services, in essence, end up replacing the user's identification data, such as IP Address, with their own. Although the user will be anonymous to the final entity from whom the information is being requested, the user is not anonymous to the entity providing "anonymous" browsing. There has also been other innovation, such as the Torpark browser, a modified Mozilla Firefox browser, which makes use of the The onion Router (TOR) Network, constantly encrypting and changing the IP Addresses. Again, although such development makes it extremely difficult to track users, it is not theoretically and practically impossible to do so. Nevertheless, the Torpark browser certainly improves internet users' privacy. Such improvement comes at the expense of performance speed, and many users may decide to forego such privacy improvement for the sake of performance speed. As in all products, future versions could end-up improving performance speed.