Following Ask.com’s efforts to ensure online privacy protection, Microsoft launches enhanced privacy protection features for Live Search, giving users control over what information they give to personalize web search.

Among the steps Microsoft plans to take include anonymous search query by permanently removing cookie IDs, IP addresses, and other identifiers.

“We have been thinking deeply about privacy related to search and online advertising and believe it is critical to evolve our privacy principles,” said Peter Cullen, chief privacy strategist at Microsoft. “We believe our enhanced principles should be part of the industry dialogue on this issue and that keeping these issues as simple as possible for consumers is the best approach. For instance, on search data, anonymous should mean anonymous.”

With Ask.com and Live Search responding to privacy related concerns of various users, one can only hope that Yahoo and Google, as well as the other search engines, will follow suit.

Related posts:

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2. Microsoft improves MSN Live Book Search, adds copyrighted works
3. Microsoft releases updated Live Search engine
4. Google ranks lowest for privacy protection practices
5. Ask.com adds privacy control feature

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