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Google Toolbar Tracks Your Browsing, Even When Off

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yeah-that-was-like-a-bug-or-something dept.

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."

2 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. found a search engine with privacy: ixquick.com by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've switched to using

    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.

    --
    Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
  2. Re:Say it ain't so by sopssa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.