Do Yahoo, Google, YouTube, etc keep track of your IP address

[wearetheborg]

I am a bit concerned about what google and others will do with the data in the future. They seem to be playing nice now, but what about the future ? AFAIK, google keeps the data forever (even emails that you delete) for "research purposes".

Regarding shopping data collection, the following fact was told to us by a business prof. When you go to the supermarket, they sometimes print coupons on the back of the receipt. It is not supposed to be random. It tracks us by the CC number, and the coupon list is generated in real time by ad server, and it sends the list to the receipt machine to print.

I still think this is pretty much a tempest in a teapot.

1. After *decades* of shopping data collection (I have lived in the same home for 30 years), NOT one retailer/vendor has a clue who I am, and NO targetted advertisement coming into the house reflects ANY buying habits I have. The correlation between me and advertisers is ZERO. The gas company cannot even forecast gas consumption properly.

2. My cookies and cache clear out on a regular basis and only is permitted to collect to a vastly smaller level than IE typically allows.

3. SpamAssassin and GreyListing has killed every possible advertisement that MIGHT make its way into my inbox for nearly 8 straight months (and counting).

4. No web page advertisement reflects who I am. In fact, advertisers are relaxing into the tired old regime of popping up drivel in the middle of news stories (stuff floating across the screens - not IE pop-ups) with the result that my general internet usage is fast declining. I simply cannot be bothered.

So at the end of a very long day, Google knows I live here and at a security site (98 percent), at my financial institutions (1 percent) and somewhere else (1 percent). So they get precious litttle for their efforts and actually know precisely ZERO.

... JDH