A tool has been developed by two researchers out of New York University which generates a bunch of fake searches. Since there are a lot of searches, your search would get diluted and lost between these searches. So, that way your search terms are usually lost in the process and hence giving you privacy.
Associated Press reports that the tool comes as AOL revealed it had released the search histories of more than 650,000 subscribers. Although user names were not included, the company admitted that the search terms themselves could contain sensitive information. Two AOL employees were fired and a third resigned over the disclosure.
This tool sends random searches, such as “boston clock” and “croissant,” to the four largest search engines — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and AOL. A fake search is made every 12 seconds under default configurations; the tool can generate millions of unique queries from its list, and users can add their own.
Trackmenot works only under firefox currently. Firefox does not have the user base when compared to internet explorer. According to some surveys, firefox is used by less than 10% of the total browsing population. Hence this tool might not be a big success. Also, by segregating the terms this tool generates, it is possible to eliminate the searches made by this tool and hence negating the tool.
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