Who's watching your searches?

Several months ago when Google announced its personalized search "feature," I was among those who quickly turned the "feature" off, because I realized that it meant Google was saving every single search I did, not anonymously, but under my own userid.

Not that I'm searching for anything wrong. But you don't want just anybody to know that you're looking for, say, 70% dark chocolate.

The other day I happened to remember this "feature" and I went back into My Account to make sure the thing was turned off. Sure enough, it was back on. There were archived searches there going back months. Motherfuckers!

Here's how to turn it off, or as they call it, "pause" this feature.

1. In the Google Mail inbox, while you're logged in, click on "All my services" at the top.
2. Click on "Personalized Search," which is the name of this "feature."
3. Now it will show your search history. If it shows anything besides "This feature has been paused," then it is saving all your searches.
4. On the left menu, click "Pause"
5. To clear the cache of saved searches, click "Remove Items
6. Click "Clear entire search history"
7. Click the Clear History button

Now you should be OK. (Who knows what they're really saving, though?)

From now on, I'm going to make sure I check this every week, manually.