Slashdot Mirror
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 are going to the trouble of setting up a proxy, why not use it for all of your web traffic? I mean, there are websites out there that collect just as much information as Google does, why do you want them collecting information about you?
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
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.
The site seems to be slow. Anyone got a link to the google cache?
This guy's the limit!
So what you're saying is that if I allow Google to store a cookie on my computer to track the history of all searches I make, they'll... track the history of all searches I make?
Heavens to betsy! This is big! How is it no one ever noticed this "cookie" thing before this Slashdot article?
I wonder if any other websites are doing this as well.
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
Use Customize Google:
Customize Google For Internet Explorer
Customize Google For FireFox
Both will anonymize your google cookie, click tracking and much more.
Both are free open source projects.
Omgili - Find out what people are saying.
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.
Find free books.
No it doesn't. It tells you how to set it up with Firefox and only Firefox via the FoxyProxy extension. That's a far cry from what you're claiming; no instructions for Safari or Opera.
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.
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.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
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,
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.)
'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.
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 :)