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Google Using DoubleClick Tracking Cookies
dstates sends news coming out of the letters the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent to a number of broadband and Internet companies about their policies and practices on user tracking. The committee has now made public 25 responses to its queries, and many companies, including Google, acknowledge using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers. The Committee is considering legislation to require explicitly informing the consumer of the type of information being gathered and any intent to use it for a different purpose, and a right to say "no" to the collection or use. The submitter notes that, while Google denies using deep packet inspection, if the traffic is a Google search or email to or from a Gmail account, Google does not need DPI to see the contents of the message. "The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more Internet companies have gathered data on customers. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said 'Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information... and then selling it as a commodity to other providers.' Some companies like NebuAd have tested deep-packet inspection with some broadband providers Knology and Cable One. Google said that it had begun to use the DoubleClick ad-serving cookie that allow the tracking of Web surfing across different sites but said it was not using deep packet inspection. Google promotes the fact that its merger with DoubleClick provides advertisers 'insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign,' as well as 'how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad.' Microsoft and Yahoo acknowledge the use of behavioral targeting. Yahoo says it allows users to turn off targeted advertising on its Web sites; Microsoft has not yet responded to the committee."
1. Turn off cookies globally.
2. Turn on cookies for sites that need it by hitting F12 and hitting 'Accept cookes only from the site I visit'.
Done. No more doubleclick cookies.
My blog
Did anyone really believe Google wasn't doing this?
I usually just single-click any urls I come across.
And slashdot uses doubleclick & google-analytics as well.
Try disabling scripts with firefox "noScript". I think /. is more readable without allowing doubleclick.net & google-analytics.com
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Ahem. STOP SPENDING MY TAX DOLLARS ON THIS CRAP.
Anyone using a computer who doesn't understand why they shouldn't accept all cookies and scripts and click on everything shiny deserves (yes, really!) to have their actions remotely monitored and the resulting data sold to the highest bidder.
I don't want to drown in regulation just because some idiots can't be bothered to pull their collective head out before they use their systems.
cogito ergo dubito
Ummm, isn't this exactly what we would expect them to do with all that information? The only people who should be surprised by this are the ones who have no idea how the internet works. That said, there are plenty of workarounds, including limiting accepted cookies only to sites you specify, or having your browser clear everything out upon closing. Sure it doesn't totally fix the problem (assuming you consider it a problem), but it certainly does limit the amount of tracking they can do.
This guy's the limit!
"Don't Do Eval". not "Don't Do Evil". The guys at Google wanted to make sure all the employees wouldn't use the eval command to create possible security holes by executing string.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Google makes it easy to opt out of the doubleclick tracking cookie:
http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html
"Anyone may opt out of the DoubleClick cookie (for both the Google content network and DoubleClick ad serving) at any time by clicking the button above."
...With or without Yahoo's option.
AdBlock Plus
In this day and age, just block all cookies by default, and allow ones from sites you use. This will even block "doubleclick" cookies as those aren't from the site you are visiting.
This doesn't address IP address, but it is a step.
CS Lite
This will let you block all those types of cookies, and as well give you MUCH better cookie management in Firefox. It lets you just deny cookies globally and just enable them for sites you want, without being a total pain in the ass
Combine that with Adblock Plus, with the tracking filters, and you can get past all this tracking stuff without having to use no-script, which considering how javascript heavy most sites are today, is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer
After they sort this cookie stuff out, I hope they hold a House Commity on forcing DoubleClick (google) to make an ad-server that doesnt crash every 5 minutes (or at least one that you can log-into with firefox). -Disgruntled Ad Trafficker
I find it ironic that this government, who greedily gobbles up vast volumes of data at every opportunity, would be barking up this tree.
Google's targeted advertisements seems reasonable; When you decide to use their free services, you should know that advertising is a part of the deal.
Broadband providers using DPI, on the other hand, is like the USPS opening your private mail and then profiting off of what they learn about you. It's all about the expectation of privacy. Broadband providers need to transfer bits and stay out of the content business. If they start doing this, there will be no way to use the internet with any modicum of privacy.
You see, they don't just get the cookie, they also get the referrer field, so Google doesn't just get to see that it is "Nicholas Weaver" who's surfing the web, but can see that I am composing a reply to this article, because the referrer field in the doubleclick adds and google analytics on slashdot allow them to know this!
Test your net with Netalyzr
Or use Firefox and uncheck Accept third-party cookies in the Privacy Options. Or use Internet Explorer and block third-party cookies. Or use Safari and disallow third-party cookies. I don't see any reason to switch browsers just to access a basic feature.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It seems like DoubleClick is Google's evil twin. When Google wants to get something using "do no evil" it is Google, if they want to do something that is evil, they use DoubleClick
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This isn't news to me. I proudly wear a tinfoil hat and therefore have always assumed Google and every other search engine does everything technically possible to track my internet usage. And I behave accordingly. Firefox deletes ALL private data each time I close it. I don't do ANYTHING on the Internet that would be upsetting if it were public knowledge.
So, you see, those of us wearing tinfoil hats aren't recluses that hide in the forest and survive on nuts and berries to avoid the grid. Instead, we are people who simply avoid the grid if and when we do want privacy and don't get upset when we get some confirmation of what we've known all along: the grid ain't private.
And as for targeted advertising, everyone's got it all wrong. Targeted advertising is the ONE thing that I DO want them to track me for. After all, seeing ads for things I might actually want to buy rather than crap I don't want is a Good Thing. Targeted Advertising IS consumer friendly. It's feeding the data into health insurance eligibility and credit scores and potentially inaccurate data into legal proceedings that's scary.
So everyone needs to stop worrying about advertising and start demanding that congress pass a law stating that if a company collects information about you and shares it with a third party without your explicit consent, that information is considered "public" in that it can count towards liable claims. Don't worry about what they share. Worry about your right to sue them if sharing the info causes you harm.
Maybe it's just me, but has anyone else noticed the pattern of a roughly daily "Google invades your privacy" story?
I'm not saying they're accurate or not: for all I know it's just an astroturfing campaign. It's just a significant trend around here.
I am officially gone from
>> their motto is "Don't be evil"
...where "don't be" approaches "be" for some values of evil.
Full Disclosure is the only thing I think Google needs to have, which it appears they already do. If you disagree and want to opt out, there is an easy solution (use another search engine). What I personally care about, is if my Internet Provider starts doing this. I believe there is a big difference between the 2.
Isn't DELIBERATELY having all your email intentionally sent to Google, about as opt-in as things can get? We have known all along that Google reads the email that the users opt to have sent to them.
I am starting to really get pissed off at the weirdo "modern" privacy movement. It used to be that we worried someone was watching us. But now we're taking active steps to push our "private" information into other people's faces, while still expecting them to not pay attention to what we are giving them. It's starting to get really absurd.
The first step to protecting your privacy isn't to regulate the spies. No, the first step is to stop cooperating with the spies. If you won't take that step, then your privacy obviously doesn't mean jack shit to you, so quit crying to the government to do something about it.
Stop sending I-looked-at-this-webpage packets to doubleclick. Stop sending your private email to Google, and stop sending your search requests to Google. You are giving them this stuff. You fucking opted in.
The developers of Firefox removed the option to disable third party cookies in Firefox 2.0 and later, stating the reason that it was not possible to block all third party cookies with this function.
There are basically two options to disable third party cookies in Firefox 2 versions.
The first would be to disable it manually by opening about:config from the address bar. Search for network.cookie.cookieBehavior and take a look a the value. If it is set to 0 you accept all cookies, 1 means you only accept cookies from the same server, 2 means you disable all cookies. Setting it to 1 has the same effect that the option in the old firefox browsers had: it disables third party cookies.
You could install an add-on as well that blocks third party cookies. One of the many extensions that does that is called CookieSafe. This one makes it possible to disable all cookies and allow them only for specific sites (whitelist).
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
That's not only overkill, it's annoying. Just do the "Accept cookies only from sites I visit" part and be done with it.
Besides, disabling cookies hardly stops them from tracking you. They could still hit you with a doublescript.js, which can be much more invasive than a cookie. Their server could glean your browser history based on link color, instead of just track you around affiliated sites. And most doubleclick site already drop doubleclick javascripts on you for banner rotation. All doubleclick has to do is change their code a bit if they aren't doing it already. At least with cookies, they have to be affiliated with the website to know you've been there.
You also need to disable swf files because they can store info cookie style too. You might diable cookies, but if you load doubleclick SWFs you're just as screwed.
Personally, I just use Omniweb and since I can filter links with perl-like regular expressions, I just drop everything from doubleclick... among other offenders.
That people who used Gmail for anything remotely personal are fucking nuts. 5 years, 10 years down the road do you really think that all of your personal Gmail information won't be either a) sold to advertisers, insurance companies, and financial institutions and b) stolen by hackers?
The original Google founders have no idea what a monster they are creating. An essential, and most times helpful monster, but a monster none the less that will someday turn on everyone. I'm looking into only using a proxy for all Google searches, you should too.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
They added the function again in firefox 3.0, so it is again possible to block third-party cookies without any extensions or other software than just a fresh firefox installation.
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
in our hosts file...
Advice: on VPS providers
Not all versions of major browsers behave the way you expect them to when you try to disable third-party cookies.
Check out Steve Gibson's cookie forensics page.
Here's a neat browser stats page showing graphically how GRC visitors have their 3rd party cookies configured by browser.
Don't forget these, too:
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
While you're at it:
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad2.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad3.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad4.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad5.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad6.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad7.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad8.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad9.doubleclick.net
There's CustomizeGoogle, a Greasemonkey script which will, among other things, randomize the replies to Google's cookies. Unfortunately, it's rather slow, and may result in Javascript "script running too long" errors. Right idea, though.
Like others have said, CookieSafe and CS Lite are like NoScript for cookies with the option to allow cookies for a specific site: permanently, for each session or once-off.
I currently use the above extensions as well as Adblock, Filterset.G and RefControl. The latter set to "forge" (send the root of the site as the referrer).
I consider these the essential privacy/security add-ons for Firefox. I'm interested if anyone has any others to add to the list.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.