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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."
Use MSN Search instead! Ha!
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
If you log into gmail then won't your search be linked anyway? (since mail.google.com would be proxied)
In the end, the simplest is to stop using google if you feel your privacy is compromised and try to find a company with a better policy.
I tend to trust google enough to keep my search history, so what that they know you search for killing your wife or drowning barbie dolls, let them assess all they want, because you cannot be found guilty of thinking about a crime.
liqbase
I wrote a while back about concern's with Google's Desktop search, as it relates to HIPAA regulations, but never thought much about my own right to privacy when using Google's searches. I guess there could be a future version of a Joe McCarthy witch hunt, where the government could supoena Google and force them to release search data.
I bookmarked his site and will implement the methods at my workplace, since Google's responce was less than satisfactory, IMHO. It was along the line of "no patient information would EVER leave our servers!"
Yeah...right
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
Correct, sort of. Perhaps I should have said that Google invades your privacy. Considering that, at least in the United States, the right to privacy only applys to your right to privacy from government entities (even that is a right bestowed by the SCOTUS rather than being spelled out in the Constitution), one really has no right to privacy from a private or even public company.
However, Google is an advertisement supported service and they still collect the search queries, even if they are annonomized. So, one could argue that unless Google wants to be able to later be able to analyze that data to find a specific individual, they should have no problem with the data being annonomized, since, in fact, they still get the same data, but in an annonomized form which cannot then be targeted back to a specific computer.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
- Pastor Martin Niemöller
The lesson? Speak out NOW, while someone else is being persecuted in violation of your Constitutional liberties. Eventually they always get around to coming after YOU.
In Germany, your neighbor typically turned you in because they didn't like you. Not because you were a Jew, a gay, or a commie.
Right now, today, someone you don't like - perhaps someone you don't even realize - can accuse you of being a terrorist - and at the very least there'll be a file on you. Good luck with flying after that... if you're lucky.
God, I hate apathetic people.....
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
There is a real easy solution (for those who have a problem with Google's practices)
1) Use a different search engine: Google (and most businesses) I'm sure will not care what you say until a critical mass
of users using other search engines (or any other product) lose customers. Of course, since they have not changed their
business model or practices since their inception, I don't think that is really going to happen anytime soon.
2) Execute a technological workaround: However that has the drawback of if (and I say if) Google decides to become nasty,
they just ban you from their system, which they could legally do, since you are violating their company policy (which again forces
you to use another search engine, but this time not by choice).
3) Complain: Perhaps they may listen, perhaps they may not, but as a soverign business unless it affects their revenue stream
(which I don't think will happen, as they happen to be one of the best at execution of both their software and business practices)
I don't personally see their revenue slowing down anytime soon.
Last thing about this subject, it is true there is no such thing as a totally secure system, but Google does a pretty good job at what they
do, why hassle them when nothing has happened (not that it won't), but for now let Google run its ship, and just be happy with the service they
provide.
As one reader said earlier... you could use MSN Search.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
How about instead releasing a program that thoroughly pollutes the user's search history regularly with so many randomly generated search phrases that it becomes impossible to link anything back to your particular searches?
'Deleting the cookie' does nothing to remove your stored search history crosslinked to your IP address
Having a dynamic IP does not help if you use your computer regularly to check email, log in to slashdot, or visit your unique collection of news sites: anything that can link your particular IP-of-the-day to your identity.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Another amazing but true fact... That doesn't negate the GPs point. If you want to use their services and use them by their rules, you can, on the other hand, you can opt out of using them. I'm fairly sure that that was covered by the original statement.