The folks over at www.Ask.com continue to do some good work, and get very little notice. The NY Times took notice of AskEraser, which allows users to make their searches more private.
Ask.com and other major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. However, when AskEraser is turned on, Ask.com discards all that information, the company said.
Caveat
Quote from AskEraser company FAQ, taken from Google Blogoscoped, http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-12-11-n81.html, : “Even when Ask Eraser is enabled, we may store your search activity data if so requested by law enforcement or legal authority pursuant to due process. In such case, we will retain your search data even if AskEraser appears to be turned on.” See AskEraser FAQ for full info: http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/about/askeraser.shtml