SAN FRANCISCO, March 14 - Web search companies collect records of the searches that people conduct, a fact that has long generated .1. among privacy advocates and some
Internet users that valuable personal data could be misused.
    Now Google is taking a step to ease those concerns. The company keeps logs of all searches, along with digital identifiers linking them to specific computers and Internet browsers. It said on Wednesday that it would start to make those logs anonymous after 18 to 24 months, making it much harder to connect search records to a person. Under current practices, the company keeps the logs intact indefinitely.
    We have decided to make this change with feedback from privacy advocates, regulators worldwide and, of course, from our users," said Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel.
    But it is unclear whether the change will have its intended effect. Privacy advocates reacted with a mix of praise and dismay to it.
    This is really the first time we have seen them make a decision to try and work out the conflict between wanting to be pro-privacy and collecting all the world's information," said Ari
Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, an advocacy group. They are not going to keep a profile on you indefinitely."
    Others were less enthusiastic. I think it is an absolute disaster for online privacy," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
    Ms. Wong said Google uses the search data internally only to improve its search engine and other services. She added that Google would release search data only if compelled by a subpoena. Even so, Google was the only major search engine to resist a Justice Department subpoena for vast amounts of search data last year - a move that drew praise from privacy advocates.
    Just how personally revealing such data can be became evident last year, when AOL released records of the searches conducted by 657,000 Americans for the benefit of researchers.

    AOL did not identify the people behind the searches, reporters from The New York Times were able to track down some of them quickly through their search requests.
    The ensuing flap caused AOL to tighten its privacy policies. The company now keeps search histories for only 13 months and does not link them to Internet protocol addresses - digital tags that can identify a specific computer.
    For its part, Yahoo keeps search data for as long as it is useful," said a spokeswoman, Nissa Anklesaria. And Microsoft said that while it does not keep search histories alongside I.P. addresses, it can connect the two if law enforcement requests it.

http://www. nytimes.com/2007/03/15/technology/15googles. html_r=I &ore f=login)

18 - No texto, ease significa

19 - No texto, o pronome sublinhado them refere-se a

a) privacy advocates.
b) intended effects.
c) others.
d) Google.
e) world's information.

 
20 - Segundo o texto,

a) a Microsoft mantém um registro das buscas de seus usuários juntamente com seus IPs.
b) o Google destrói os registros das buscas de seus usuários após 18 meses.
c) o AOL sempre manteve seus registros de buscas por apenas 13 meses.
d) o Yahoo também já aderiu à prática de destruir os registros de buscas de seus usuários em, no máximo, 24 meses.
e) o Google mantém registros das buscas dos usuários com informações que permitem identificá-los.

21 - According to the text, privacy advocates

a) are quite happy about Google's decision to keep search logs intact indefinitely.
b) have influenced Google's decision to make search logs anonymous right away.
c) are unanimous in their belief that Web search companies should not keep search records at all.
d) praised Google's decision to resist a subpoena to disclose a large amount of search data.
e) have agreed that search records should only be used to improve a company's search engine or any other service.

 23 - Um sinônimo para badly, no texto, é

a) hardly.
b) very much.
c) not at all.
d) slightly.
e) even.

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