Google Chrome: How secure is your information?

Google is growing. From Chrome to G1, it’s not just for searching anymore.

As the Google giant is creating new breeds of consumers (“cross-consumers,” I call them — spanning email, news, mobile devices, Web browsers, etc.), what is happening to all of our personal information? Google knows who we’re emailing, what we’re emailing, what we’re searching…

The launch of Chrome in September marked a big step for Google — the browser would be in direct competition with Microsoft’s IE. I downloaded Google’s Chrome right away, eager to test it out. I enjoyed features like “Google Suggest,” which sends Google searches as you’re typing them out, anticipating your search desires. With every word you type out in your search query, you get links pertaining to that particular phrase. As if searching could get easier?

As it is, we can literally find out anything about everything. Google culls information from many sites and quick answers can be seen directly on the search results. If I wanted to know the dates of the American Civil War, I just need to type in American Civil War and I immediately get the start and end dates in the summaries. I don’t even have to go to any of the sites if I don’t want to.

But even if I’m not going anywhere, my information still is.

How secure is my information? Brian Rakowski, product manager for Chrome, said queries sent to Google through the autosuggest feature include the user’s IP address and the time the query was made. But Google logs only 2% of this information, according to Rakowski, and makes it anonymous after 24 hours by removing the last four IP address digits associated with the query.

What about the privacy feature on Chrome — the incognito tab? This feature turns off autosuggest and allows users to surf the Web without leaving a history or cookies. But, according to Google, you can’t entirely cover up someone’s Internet activity.

Search wisely.