Defeating Google's Perpetual Search Logging

heretic108 writes "Google's policy of storing everyone's search histories forever is causing concern amongst many, especially since Google stores a cookie on everyone's PC expiring in 2038. But at least one user is fighting back. His short and simple guide tells you how to set up any decent web browser so that it routes Google requests through an anonymous proxy, while sending everything else direct to the net for full-speed surfing. Follow these steps and get Google's nose out of your business once and for all."

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Text before slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Protect Your Privacy from Google

Abstract

A simple HOWTO for stopping Google from logging your search history.

The Problem

While Google.com is a brilliant search site, and while its proprieters claim to abide by their 'do no evil' motto, there is one practice that threatens to expose you to much evil down the track.

Google places a cookie on every user's computer, timed to expire in 2038. With this cookie, they can track you and log your entire search history. In fact, Google has recently indicated that they won't be deleting people's search histories.

While this cookie may not directly identify you by name, an analysis of your search history over time can definitely help an attacker (or abusive government authority) to identify you personally.

Many people fight back by setting up an anonymous proxy for all their web surfing, but this can slow down their accesses terribly. Such slowness sooner or later drives most people to revert to direct non-anonymous internet access.

A Solution

In summary, the solution is to clear all long-lasting cookies, set your browser to not keep cookies between restarts, and divert all google requests out through an anonymous proxy.

This will protect your privacy as far as google is concerned, but allow you to enjoy full-speed browsing with other sites.

Follow these simple steps:

Get access to an anonymous web proxy. A common favourite is the Tor network

Be using Mozilla Firefox.

Install the FoxyProxy extension for Firefox

Within FoxyProxy configuration, add an entry for your anonymous proxy. Within this proxy, add 2 whitelist wildcard rules, with the patterns:

http://.google.com/*

http://google.com/

Clear out all your browser cookies

Set Firefox so that it only keeps cookies till you close Firefox (Edit/Preferences/Privacy/Cookies)

If there are any other sites that may be unduly logging your activity, and don't have a refular log deletion policy, add some entries for these sites into your anonymous proxy matchlist in FoxyProxy.

With these measures in place, all your regular web requests will go out directly to the internet, while all requests for *.google.com will go via the Tor anonymity network. Also, since your cookies are getting deleted every time you close/restart Firefox, then Google will no longer be able to build a history of your web surfing.

I appreciate that for some amongst us, this is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. But at least we can arrest the extent of the privacy violation which Google is perpetrating.

Conclusion
The searches you send out to Google are your business. You have the right to prevent Google from accumulating a perpetual history of your web searching. Use that right.

RTFS: "for full-speed surfing"

[Jeff Molby]

The summary itself answers your question, and TFA goes even further to say

If there are any other sites that may be unduly logging your activity...add some entries for these sites into your anonymous proxy matchlist in FoxyProxy.

Next time spend atleast 30 seconds reading before you post.

clusty

[bcrowell]

Clusty has an excellent privacy policy. I'm going to try using them for a while and see if the results are comparable in quality to google's.

And before anyone says that you don't need to worry if you aren't doing anything illegal, try reading up on the history of the FBI. They had a massive file on Einstein, who, e.g., belonged to "communist front" organizations like the the American Crusade to End Lynching. Check out the Wikipedia article on COINTELPRO, especially the part about the murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo (by a carload of Klansman with an FBI agent riding along), and the FBI's subsequent smear campaign against Liuzzo.

No need for a Firefox extention

[DosBubba]

A Proxy AutoConfig (PAC) script is well suited for this task:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
if (shExpMatch(url, "*http://*.google.*"))
return "SOCKS 127.0.0.1:9050"; //Proxy here
else
return "DIRECT";
}

Place the above in a text file, and set it as the automatic proxy config file for your web browser (for Firefox users, Preferences>General>Connection Settings).
The matching string *http://*.google.*" should be used instead of http://.google.com/* as a foreign proxy will cause Google to redirect you to its respected cctld.

Re:Pffff...

[jasen666]

Troll? My ass.
He's absolutely right. Do you honestly beleive that other search engines do not save the searches you type into THEIR server? What just happened with AOL? At least Google is honest about it and made it publicly known that everything is saved, thus giving you the option to not use them if you don't like that.
They're providing a free servivce to you, if you don't want them to know what you're searching for, don't use the service. Or waste time setting up proxies and whatnot. But as has been mentioned, you better proxy everyone, because every web service you use probably saves some information about you.
Personally, I have too many other important things in my life to worry about other than the fact that google saved that search for "hentai porn" last week.

Re:Hilarious guide, using Tor....

[nmb3000]

Not only that, but I find it just so picturesquely Slashdot that the summary says "tells you how to set up any decent web browser" and the actual article explicitly only works with Firefox. IE/Safari/Opera users just laugh at the submitter and "editors".

That, and who thinks they are fooling anyone by doing this? If you have a Google account for other services like Gmail, then you must allow Google to set a cookie, and you are still identifying yourself. You're also giving up the ability to customize your searches (safesearch, number of results, languages, etc).

Depending on how your cookie settings are set, the only thing Google will know is what you're searching for. If you're really that worried about it, just delete the Google cookie when you're finished for the day/week/month. If all you use is Search, then just blacklist google.com in your cookie settings. That, or you can send all your traffic through an anonymous third party who has no accountability. If you're concerned about absolute privacy with regards to Google, it seems unlikely you'd give the same information to some anonymous others.

Re:Can't help but ask...

[savala]

I imagine you could easily make a firefox plugin that would destroy all cookies from either a whitelist or blacklist of domains every time you start/shutdown the browser.

There's absolutely no reason to use a plugin for that, Firefox can do this just by itself (as can SeaMonkey, and even Mozilla could do it already). You can either create a blacklist of domains that are only allowed to set session cookies (tools -> options -> privacy -> cookies -> exceptions -> "allow for session" (which downgrades all cookies to being valid for the session only), or a whitelist of domains that are allowed to set cookies ("allow"), while everything else will honor "keep cookies: until I close Firefox".)

(So to put it in other word, Exceptions override any other settings, so you can use it as both whitelist and blacklist, while general settings govern all other sites.)

Re:Hilarious guide, using Tor....

[desertrat_it]

I use Google, I use Gmail, I use Firefox, I only ever allow Google to set session cookies. That way I simply close my web browser and my searches become just so much noise. Why is everyone making such a big fuss about this? Session cookies are the answer :)