Search engines in general will track who you are and where you are, in order to supply you with targeted ads. They make money by showing you ads from people who have paid to be at the top of the list, and by notifying the advertisers that you clicked on a link from their search results. However, there is no way to know where the information they collect is actually being used. It might, in fact, be sold to advertisers looking for people who have searched with particular key words. Fundamentally, you should have the ability to search without being tracked. The minimum amount of information required to satisfy the search engine is called a “sanitized” string.
How About An Example?
Your webmaster was fascinated by a concept called “ASCII Art” which uses keyboard input to create outline drawings, such as (from ASCII Art Drinks - asciiart.eu by “jgs” ‑ possibly Joan G. Stark, who has multiple other examples on that site):
_____
/.---.\
|`````|
\ /
`-.-' ____
| /\ .' /\
__|__ |K----; | |
jgs`-----` \/ '.___\/
Using Windows' "Type here to search" capability, I entered ASCII Art and asked to display the result as a web page. The data sent to Bing in the address bar was (color added for emphasis):
https://www.bing.com/search?q=ascii+art&form=WNSGPH&qs=LS&cvid=9114fe5169754c6d9e1bca60cca87dee&pq=ascii+art&cc=US&setlang=en-US&nclid=73C03247E5CBDE69DC6AE08EBF469EB1&ts=1677503187396&wsso=Moderate
That’s a lot. What does it all mean? Breaking down the “stuff” in the address bar requires understanding the basic syntax, which is simply (page), then a question mark, then additional (parameters). Parameters in turn is p1=something, p2=something, p3=something… all separated by an ampersand. Breaking down the long string, we find the page is https://www.bing.com/search;. No big surpise there. But what about all those “parameters”?
q=ascii+art
form=WNSGPH
qs=LS
cvid=9114fe5169754c6d9e1bca60cca87dee
pq=ascii+art
cc=US
setlang=en-US
nclid=73C03247E5CBDE69DC6AE08EBF469EB1
ts=1677503187396
wsso=Moderate
The (Relatively) Obvious Stuff
Many of us can recognize that the question became the parameter q= followed by some processing of ASCII Art into ascii+art. The parameter setlang= is probably setting the language to en-US, commonly known as US English. The parameter form= might be telling Bing which input form I was using to ask my question, but that’s starting to get into what I was doing. Computer progammers might even recognize ts= to be a timestamp being set to 1677503187396, which can in fact be decoded to be 27-Feb-2023 08:06:27 AM (plus 396 milliseconds ‑ might as well be precise).
The Questionable Stuff
The real concerns here are cvid= and nclid=. These cannot rationally be anything other than identifiers for the person posing the question. When I typed the sanitized string https://www.bing.com/search?q=ascii+art directly into the address bar, I got the same search results, without sending the questionable identifiers.
The Conclusion
A sanitized string can give the same results, without all the other suspicious stuff ‑ so use it for a safer search. Remember: just because you’re paranoid…
The standard page header contains the following functions:
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returns to Trinidays Home.
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opens HELP for a page (if shown).
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returns from HELP to the original page (if shown).
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accesses the following menus:
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Trinidad Way groups pages primarily of interest to residents of Trinidad Way, including:
- Neighbors goups several pages, including the street map and info about CONCUR members.
- Hurricane Prep discusses some thoughts on preparing for a major storm.
- Roof Tiles captures some information about your tiled roof.
- FEMA Flood Map is the most recent mapping for Trinidad Way, with some observations about storm surge.
- Passwords is a quick way to generate secure passwords. (Trinidad Way will not keep any information about them.)
- Memes is a fun way to create your own memes.
- Safer Searches allows you to conduct an Internet search while submitting less identifying information about you.
- IslandWalk accesses the CONCUR website and a few things about IslandWalk.
- Newsletters accesses the weekly and monthly e-blasts from Castle Group, as well as some articles of particular significance.
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Information groups pages of interest primarily within the Naples area, including:
- Telephone Numbers accesses interesting telephone numbers
- Interactive Maps accesses interesting places both local and around the hemisphere
- News Weather etc. directly access popular categories of mostly‑external sites.
- More Sites directly access even more categories of local and internet pages in sets for display or visiting
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Trinidad Way groups pages primarily of interest to residents of Trinidad Way, including:
Decisions of the judge are final, but feel free to lobby for another topic to be covered or
another page to be referenced from this site.
Explore a bit, and always have fun.
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believed to be reliable. Any of the information and/or opinions may be wrong.”
Kenneth W. Brown, 4057 Trinidad Way, Naples, FL 34119
FBO Trinidad Way Neighborhood, IslandWalk