A day after Google unveiled a dashboard to help quell user's privacy concerns, a team of Catalan researchers have announced that they have developed a protocol that distorts the user profile generated by search engines so that searches cannot be saved, TG Daily reports. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search save the profiles of their users with the argument that they are more familiar with their interests and offer a more efficient response.

According to the researchers, the system uses rerouting, cryptography and obfuscation to maintain anonymity for search engine users without the significant time-lag issues associated with current anonymizers on the market, says PC Pro. There is a price to pay for such privacy, says lead scientist Jordi Castellá-Roca.

He notes:

Because we are hiding who we are, the search engine cannot serve the specialized content, such as results tailored to what you have looked at in the past.

The tool is expected to be available next April.