As web based applications become more and more integrated into our lives, it has never been easier to monitor our tastes, preferences and fascinations. Whether it’s a social networking platform like Facebook or Myspace, or search providers like Google and Yahoo, a common trend is emerging - everyone is keeping track of our data.

For example, every time an Internet user types something into the Google search bar, it is recorded and logged by the company on a server farm until 2038. Some people could really care less about this, while others hold their personal privacy in very high regard. Sometimes what we search on the Internet is private and knowing that your every move is being monitored stirs strange feelings. Big brother is always watching!

To counter act your data being stored and scanned for God knows what data mining purposes, give Scroogle a try! Created by a former Google employee and owned and operated by Public Information Research, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that also operates Google Watch, Scroogle deletes all stored search logs after 48 hours and does not use any data storing cookies. Scroogle protects you by randomly generating an IP address that masks your own, while sending your search request off to Google. In essence, it allows you to search the web anonymously, without receiving Google advertisements. There is support for 28 languages, and Mozilla offers a Scroogle plugin for the Firefox search bar. Currently, it facilitates around 90,000 searches a day.

Don’t think services like this go unnoticed by the big boys, though. Microsoft has put a kibosh on Scroogle, and whether or not Google will challenge the legality of the search engine is at this point unknown.

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