Staff: Forget about sacrificing your privacy to a government chasing terrorists and kiddie pervs. You’re already giving away more of it than they want.

Here’s what CNET extracted from Big Search Engine mouthpieces:

All the major search engines match IP addresses and cookies with search terms.

If you subscribe to any of a search engine’s services, like say, mail or Adwords, they also match your name to the IP address, cookie and search term.

Then they use this information in ways you may not like to make… gasp!… money:

We may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

In other words, you and searchfolk are making a trade. Your privacy for their baubles.

What? You thought this stuff was really free?

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