Google Toolbar Tracks Your Browsing, Even When Off

garg0yle writes "Google's Toolbar is supposed to allow the user to disable it. However, it was discovered by a researcher that it was still sending information even when disabled. A patch is now available, and Google claims this was just a bug, not a feature."

Comments

Oops

[strikeleader]

this was just a bug, not a feature....
Yea...right

Re:Oops

[hansraj]

Rephrasing from FTFA:

Google toolbar allowed two "modes" for disable. Users could either disable it permanently or for one specific window. In the latter case, for some versions of the toolbar it didn't disable. Browser restart or opening new windows after activating that mode did in fact disable the toolbar.

Now, even though it doesn't make sense for the "disable this window" to work after a browser restart, it does make it plausible that it was a bug.

Re:Oops

[natehoy]

Yes, it is right, this is a "bug".

Google's statement was completely correct, they just used a form of the word "bug" that you might not have expected them to use in that context.

That is the common vernacular for a wiretap device, right? A "bug"?

It bugs me that they would bug me then call it a bug.

Re:Oops

[Purity Of Essence]

It's not a bug, it's an alibi.

Re:Oops

[HermMunster]

I've been telling people forever that toolbars have only one purpose, which is to track. If you really think about it there are no real features of the toolbar other than tracking. Those buttons they add can easily be accomplished with the bookmarks toolbar shortcuts/bookmarks.

Somewhat rhetorical: What's the "other" purpose of having those toolbars? You get one for Microsoft, another for Yahoo, for Google, for Ask, etc., (makes me nauseous just to think about it).

Those toolbars are being installed into your browser by a number of products that have the option to install it by default such as the Java installer. As someone that cleans up a lot of computers every year in my shop to interrupt this process process is time consuming--to remove or disable them. Though it is time consuming I remove or disable them on almost every customer's computer that I work on. I then inform my customers of the purpose and consequences of the toolbars.

How much of this behavior is embedded in browsers provided by closed source vendors such as Microsoft? Do they track you and report back searches you do in Google to help them to gain a leg up on their searches? I've always wondered that.

Say it ain't so

[eihab]

As far as I'm concerned toolbar == spy-ware. Google jumped the shark and joined the ranks of Yahoo, MSN and Happy-smiley-spy-ware-toolbar the day they created one and started shoving it down people's throat.

No techie I know installs any toolbar in IE or Firefox. The only poor souls that seems to be stuck with them are non-techies, who usually have at least 3-4 toolbars and they "don't know how it happened".

It's also amazing to watch them browse the web, they almost never use the address bar, it's either the Google or Yahoo toolbar's search box, and they seem to mix and match them in any given session. Basically whatever box is closest to the mouse pointer.

I would be surprised if this was actually a "bug" and not a feature, sounds like a great bug to have for a data mining company. I also wonder if the assertion that it only affects "versions 6.3.911.1819 through 6.4.1311.42" is true. How can anyone confirm that since "the company intends to automatically update users' toolbars sometime today". Who has an older version to check?

Google toolbar, analytics, ad sense, double click, chrome... My love for Google is diminishing faster than the DOW in 2008.

Re:Say it ain't so

[sopssa]

Google toolbar, analytics, ad sense, double click, chrome... My love for Google is diminishing faster than the DOW in 2008.

Google has always been about datamining and advertising and you're always been losing your privacy to them. It's just now that people are starting to get it. And now Larry & Sergey are selling their shares and other more business oriented people will get more saying on the company. Even if Google wasn't being so intrusive before (and it kind of was), being a publicly traded company you never know what happens with your data in future.

Re:Say it ain't so

[elrous0]

The last guy whose computer I worked on must have had 5 or 6 toolbars in his browser, countless viruses, and he had been phished so many times that his browser had all but stopped working under the load (it loaded up about ten different phishing sites and at least a dozen porn pop-ups at every boot). This idiot basically clicked on any link or attachment he got, and had no doubt caused his credit card company no end of grief. I took one look at his system and told him he needed to take it to Best Buy and have them do a fresh install of Windows. Much as I hate to send the business to those shyster monkeys at BB, this is now the advice I give to ANYONE who asks me to fix their computer ("fix" usually being synoymous with "I've got a bunch of viruses/crapware/malware/etc., and I will get it all again days after you reinstall Windows"). I just wish we could institute a licensing process for accessing the information superhighway, much like we have for accessing our real highways.

Re:Say it ain't so

[WraithCube]

While I do agree with most of what you said and 99.9% of toolbars are nothing but useless spyware, there are a few actual useful ones. Just because so many companies have built useless toolbars doesn't mean that there can't be a legitimately useful one amoung the clutter. The Web Developer toolbar is a favorite I usually have installed in firefox as it has a lot of useful tools/shortcuts. Then again I also usually even disable the bookmarks toolbar as the dropdown menu works quite well and i don't like giving up screen space.

Also, a lot of those users with 4-6 toolbars usually manage to hide at least a few of them in the browser window without uninstalling them. Pulling up add-remove programs while removing something else and seeing a list of toolbars is alway an unwelcome surprise. Especially when they need to be convinced that they really don't need all 6 toolbars...

Re:Say it ain't so

[eihab]

What is wrong with Chrome?

- Invasion of privacy, the queries that fly off to Google with every key stroke
- Mandatory Google-updater that stays on your system for a day even after you uninstall everything

Whats wrong with analytics?

Two perspectives:

User: Google stalking you around the web. No clear privacy policy for not combining search/google-account data with analytics.

Site-owner/Advertiser: Missing help pages (404), stats do not add up. Very unpolished experience specifically when combined with ad sense: constantly getting "beta" features when it's a paid-for service is not good.

Misleading title

[Rik Sweeney]

Google Toolbar Tracks Your Browsing, Even When Off

At first I thought that this meant that Google was tracking my movements even when my computer was off. I wondered how they'd do this and then I remembered about Google Street View.

Sly bastards.

found a search engine with privacy: ixquick.com

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

I've switched to using

• http://ixquick.com

It's a meta search engine that focusses on privacy by not logging your IP address and your searches. On the technical side, it's nearly as good as the big name search engine I used previously.

Here's a plugin for GNU IceCat / IceWeasel / Firefox: Ixquick, or the https version (which I haven't tried, but I guess is the same to users).

One hiccup: their ads system uses Google ads. Maybe they've implemented this in an anonymous way. I hope they have, but either way, at least with ixquick there a hope of privacy, unlike Google.

Re:found a search engine with privacy: ixquick.com

[eihab]

One hiccup: their ads system uses Google ads. Maybe they've implemented this in an anonymous way. I hope they have, but either way, at least with ixquick there a hope of privacy, unlike Google.

It looks like they did. The ads are not loaded with Javascript or anything from Google. They are basically links served from ixquick's server as:
http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=[Publisher/Advertiser Identifier]&adurl=[URL of the ad].

Since ixquick uses POST instead of GET, Google can't see your keywords in the referrer header, all they'll see is that you came from (http://us2.ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl).

My only issue with these meta-search engines is that they rely on all of the other search engines to produce their results. I'm not sure if what they're doing is allowed by the engines' terms of services (e.g. I don't see Google on ixquick's list, but yet there's Scroogle), and I don't know if they're viable long term.

I'm pretty sure if they get big enough then Bing, Yahoo and others will have an issue with their traffic going ixquick's way.

Re:No toolbar here

[Shakrai]

The two best search engines are Google and Bing, both owned by mega-corps.

Do you think it's possible for a non-megacorp to build the infrastructure required to index a sizable portion of the web and serve search results in real time to a large audience?

So just rename "Toolbars" into "Foolbars" . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . that should remove any responsibility of indemnity of the Foolbar vendor.

Corporate Defense Lawyer: "Your Honor, the plaintiff, Mr. Terry Fuckwit, who is suing for privacy violations, did knowingly install and use our product, appropriately named 'Foolbar'."

Judge: "Anyone who uses such a product is a dumb-ass and has shit for brains. Case dismissed."

Judge: "Now on to the next case, concerning another of your products, 'KieferSutherlandsCattlePonziScheme' for Windows 7 . . ."

Re:Does that word mean what you think it means?

[Shakrai]

Google did it when there was no viable competition. People tend to forget just how badly the then current alternatives sucked.

Re:Geez

[mcgrew]

Pontiac: "We build excitement!" (bad brakes and steering)
Ford: "Quality us job one" (they have work to do on quality)
Chevy: "Like a rock" (damned thing won't start)
Google: "Don't be evil" (it's ok to DO evil though)

Maybe I see the past with rose colored glasses, but it doesn't seem like businesses were all run by liars and thieves when I was young. Maybe I was just naive in my youth.

Re:No toolbar here

[Shakrai]

the main issue is the way they are making money out of it (e.g. they profit from farming your browsing habits).

If it bothers you that much then install CustomizeGoogle and block their click tracking and cookies. That's a free solution that will prevent them from building up much of a profile on you. If you want to spend a little bit of money you can use an Anonymous web proxy to go a step further and keep them from associating your IP address to your search queries.

Point being, there are ways around Google's invasive data mining for those who are willing to invest a small amount of effort.

Re:Does that word mean what you think it means?

[Albanach]

Google did it when there was no viable competition.

Google did it when the web was a whole lot smaller. When Google started out, broadband was all but unheard of and the web was still in its infancy.