When Google released its Flu Trends service earlier this week, the Drudge Report flashed a headline that read: “SICK SURVEILLANCE: GOOGLE REPORTS FLU SEARCHES, LOCATIONS TO FEDS.”Google sought to avoid this kind of reaction by talking about how Google Flu Trends protects the privacy of its users. The service relies “on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week,” Google said.
bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/does-google-flu-trends-raises-new-privacy-risks/