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Hiding From Google
penguinrecorder writes "Google offers Web users a simple trade-off: Let the search giant track a substantial portion of your comings and goings around the Web, and it will offer you a free, superior online experience. Now independent security researcher Moxie Marlinspike is making Web users a counter-offer: take Google's giveaways and keep your privacy too. On Tuesday, Marlinspike launched a service he calls GoogleSharing, a plug-in for Firefox designed to give users access to Google's online offerings while cloaking their identity from the company's data collection tools. By hosting a proxy server with a collection of Google 'identities,' the privacy software will allow users temporarily to route their traffic through another computer that masks their identity by mixing their online actions with those of other users. The system is totally transparent, with no special 'alternative' websites to visit. Your normal work flow should be exactly the same." GoogleSharing only works for those services not requiring a Google login; for the latter, no proxying is done.
They've had an opt out option for a long time.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
In Google we trust. In Moxie Marlinspike who wants to be in a position to collect all our Google non-logged-in content... nope.
"Instead of sending your private information to Google directly, use my awesome proxy server to send your private information to Google anonymously. I promise I will not snoop any more than Google does!"
www.optimizegoogle.com Tick most stuff, especially remove click tracking.
There, now Google knows what I search for, but never which link I clicked.
Nearly every Google product competes with at least two other brands for the same thing. If you don't like Google, you can use something else.
Nice tradeoff. Now HE can track you on his proxy. He can sell the information too (in aggregated form if he's scrupulous).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Is it me, or has Google started to slide in the media towards away from its 'Don't Be Evil' policy? Personally, I think they operate well within moral bounds, but to a lot of major networks, blogs, and news aggregates, the opposite seems to be opines.
In principle, most want their usage statistics retained for a short-while, if at all. Most prefer their statistics only confided with first channel of contact as well. Are people considering that these mass usage statistics may comprise some of the magic that makes their platform so successful and useful? Continual refinement due to constant sources of usage information, IMO, seems to be working great for them. The naysayers neigh, but until I see a genuine effort by other companies to be as philanthropic, open-source friendly, charitable, and hospitable, I will shelve my skepticism and contempt for their nosiness in hopes of a continually great service.
How much would people complain if search became a pay-per-search model? If all those in favor of eliminating usage-statistics completely had their way, Ad-Words and dynamic advertising content would be out, and these search giants would be looking for another form of revenue. Something to think about...
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Google runs an ad network because it makes money. They still honor their "Don't be evil" promises, but they've got to do some user tracking because that makes ads more valuable. If you took advertising away from Google... how would they make money? Would anybody pay Google to not show ads to them?
Is Google hiding this "superior online experience"? All I've seen is a lot of vastly inferior web crap, like Gmail.
That is all.
since it just does searches, but what about scroogle?
"To stop the terrorists."
Download, install, properly configure Tor:
https://www.torproject.org/
Certainly you should choose an open source and free operating system to
increase your security/privacy: http://www.distrowatch.com/
Use one of the many tools available to build your own Linux liveCD/DVD/USB
with Tor installed/configured and yank out all of your HDDs or unplug them
while using Tor via Linux liveCD/DVD/USB, then while running Tor:
Scroogle SSL:
https://ssl.scroogle.org/
and for mail:
Safe-Mail:
No cookies, no script, no java, no flash required!
https://www.safe-mail.net/
In the words of Woody Woodpecker:
Hah ha ha HAH ha, Hah ha ha HAH ha, HAHAHAHHAHAHHAAH!
Fuck you corporations, fuck you snoopers, I do it MY WAY.
...not having a Google account, disabling scripts, and blocking all Google cookies including Analytics doesn't do except give Mr. Moxie a chance to track me? Why should I trust him more than Google? I know what Google is after. What does he want?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I wonder why he doesn't make an extension for Google Chrome. Oh wait...
"My child, you have come to me my son. For who now is your father if it is not me? I am the well spring, from which you flow. When I am gone, you will have never been. What would your world be, without me? My son." -Thulsa Doom
Get down on your god damn knees and pray for the sweet salvation of Thulsa Doom you fucking slug! Who else could bring you to your full potential but Thulsa Doom? Who else could show you your place in the cosmos? You owe Thulsa Doom your eternal devotion!
Thulsa Doom!
So yo dont trust Google, the company just told China where it gets off. Then you will trust this unknown anonymizer plug in. Great, would you like to help me cash the 9 million dollars I have stolen from the Nigerian Oil Company?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is some kind of Google joke, right? Like, "Ha ha, silly paranoids. We set up a proxy so you could circumvent us but really it's us too and no we even know who the paranoids are that we've already been watching for nearly a decade. Oh and you're probably a terrorist too so we've already alerted the authorities."
Ok ok, so it's for reals. But am I really going to trust this guy more than I trust Google?
and sacrifice your privacy to Moxie Marlinspike.
His motto is, "Don't get caught being evil."
Google offers you a choice. If one doesn't want to participate then fine, don't use Google. If one uses Google and expects them to keep their part of the bargain then they should hold up their end. Anything less is like saying: I like the yummy goodness of candy bars, but I don't like paying for them, but I am clever so I use stealth to eat them without paying for them. That "clever stealth" is, by any other name, still stealing.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There is another web site providing the same service, the badly named: Scroogle.
Hey Google! Try to find out who I am, NOW! ;)
This people are using a lot of different web services but they are afraid only of this one. I can't get it.
So I'm supposed to install this Proxy add on, then put my google account details, that has my google docs and google checkout account?
Ummm .... no
one of the things that helps make google great is the fact that it collects data about users. is uses the data obtained through users to make it more accurate for you and everyone else.
if you dont like it, just use bing because we know they dont tamper with the results. ;)
but seriously, who cares if google knows i search for sweet sweet animated donkey porn during the day and midget porn at night?
I offer the same service - and more. I'll route your google/msn/yahoo/windows live/banking/ebay through tor for you. You can inspect the code for my tor client and proxy (Open Source of course). Hell I'll even offer SSL and HTTPS - both ways. Opt out on the banking data too!
I use Google as a one word spell check. Make's my browsing and web habits data useless. Or at least I like to think so.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
This sounds like a man in the middle attack to me.
- passion
I often find the choice of ads that Gmail comes up with more interesting than the actual email. It's sometimes a bit disconcerting how relevant they are (how did they know I'm a Barry Manilow Fan?!?) but if I want to be truly anonymous (which is pretty rare) I know not to use any of their services. One thing I've noticed is if you get a "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" email, that ad column is vacant (presumably nobody wants their company associated with that.) Also, I just checked and a message about a friend passing away was respectfully ad free.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
IMO Google's data mining to generate targeted ads isn't too bad.
Consider that if instead of for example assuming that all investors are radical economic actors, Wall Street was able to datamine investor's habits in real-time and automatically adjust it's models accordingly, the chances of an economic disaster like what happened recently would have been reduced at least, but there would be similar concerns about investor privacy.
Consider that in both cases, what it is trying to do is to model human behavior.
1) Browse through your ISP proxy (you often get faster access as a benefit)
2) Adblock plus google-analytics (not just google ads)
At the Seeks project (http://www.seeks-project.info), we're trying to build an Open Source personal websearch proxy. Running nodes have no logging, one has SSL. Compared to googlesharing, we build a metasearch engine, so it is not limited to google.
Google buys out Marlinspike in 3 .. 2 ... 1 ...
Alternatively you could, like, turn off cookies? At least if you are not on a static IP and/or share said IP with several others.
True, 3/4 of websites I use regularly go through google statistics and the remaining 1/4 are searches by Google itself.
They know it all, based on my IP that never changes, so much that after a day or two browsing without closing Firefox I see in the Search Results of Google for unrelated subjects also the some subjects I'm reading about in other pages.
To explain it better: I'm reading about oranges, I search about pizza in another tab et voila`: pizza with oranges slips quietly on top on my search results (pizza and oranges are just examples, your mileage may vary)
Scarily said that, back to the subject:
1. People wants to hide from Google
2. I pay to set up a free proxy where, say, all google analytics query are proxied
3. All people that wanted to hide from google (say, those who wanted to keep secret their passion for oranges) use my proxy
4. I (a certainly less known someone than a big corporation) potentially know everything of who didn't want Google to know
5. [..]
6. $$$ Money!
Genial indeed.
That's why they are really mad. If it was just a few human rights activists that got hacked, jacked, and sent to prison for 10 years in China, Brin and the boys wouldn't have batted an eye.
I wonder if google has anything on chinese govt officials?
I am currently getting together some thoughts on similar topic. I plan to publish around 10 articles specialized on strategies to consciously manifest yourself for any information web (google is just least "enemy"). My articles should provide some ways from hiding from spam info collectors, to customize your "web", and before all to do personalised tricks on information agencies, which are able to collect anything on your person in highly global and automate way. I mean it's not problem for any "they" (from commercial agencies to background powers) to extract you as entity, and put your friends your interests and your opinions / activity into folder. Another big fail I'm trying to find improvisation ways is managing your track in web history (how do you appear if I extract all your written material from past from web). This subject is highly important for me, as I am psychically unstable, and I would welcomed unified way to delete / comment / find everything published by myself in past. But priority is antispam and customizations to "automatically extracted entity". Anyone feels destined to colaborate? Leave me a message in any case.
you can just go here
http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
you can opt out of behaviorally targeted advertising from google, and a bunch of other companies as well
You can avoid dns this way. there is this dude apk who uses them here to do that much by hardcodes of ip addresses into it so he never calls on dns servers.
Google Toolbar Tracks Browsing Even After Users Choose "Disable" -
http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html
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