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GoogleSharing, Now With No Trust Required
An anonymous reader writes "GoogleSharing, the popular Google anonymizing service created by well known privacy advocate and security researcher Moxie Marlinspike, has released a major new version today. The biggest change is leveraging Google's SSL search option to provide an anonymizing service which doesn't require you to trust either Google or GoogleSharing. This means that anyone who wishes to opt out of Google's data collection practices can now do so without having to trust the operator of the anonymizing service."
Isn't there?
I would think the same privacy they want for the right reasons you want for the right reasons. To be able to have privacy.
Let me refer you to the second sentence of the summary:
"The biggest change is leveraging Google's SSL search option to provide an anonymizing service which doesn't require you to trust either Google or GoogleSharing."
Wow.
You are right. That says I don't have trust google or googlesharing. ... assuming I trust the entity that makes that claim.
Oh. The entity making the claim that I don't need to trust GoogleSharing is GoogleSharing. Neat.
So if I don't trust googlesharing, why would my distrust be satisfied by the fact that they claim I don't need to trust them? That makes about as much sense as a fly asking the spider if he can take a nap on the web... the spider said he wasn't hungry... I guess there's nothing to worry about. :facepalm
Now, if you had instead referred me to the googlesharing FAQ:
http://googlesharing.net/faq.html#faq6
"If you're still worried, remember that the GoogleSharing addon and proxy code is publicly available. So it's possible for you to run a GoogleSharing proxy yourself, or to find someone who you do trust."
That's at least a step in the right direction. I can inspect and run the software on a server I do trust.*
And if I use the GoogleSharing servers, than I do still need to trust GoogleSharing to be running the software they claim to be running. I expect they are worthy of that trust but you still have to trust them unless you are running your own server after inspecting the source.*
** And you will need to find a bunch of people who trust YOU using your server for you to derive any privacy benefit from running your own server. Bit of a catch-22 there.
Grammar and spelling as a virtual fingerprint...
I don't believe anything could go wrong at all.
In any event, I am afraid it is time to unveil your true identity using the grammar and spelling footprint technique. I say to you Mr. Abraham Lincoln... how does it feel to be unmasked by your own musings!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Yes its all about the plain text and your use of unique data eg a name on yahoo, facebook, MSN, an email ect. :)
That will all get noted and linked back to a friend of a friend of a friend who has been flagged as a person of interest.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5jex52BhXYEJ:wikileaks.org/wiki/EU_social_network_spy_system_brief,_INDECT_Work_Package_4,_2009+INDECT+Work+Package+4&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk as
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/EU_social_network_spy_system_brief,_INDECT_Work_Package_4,_2009 seems to be down. The NSA/GCHQ ect dont care where/how the text comes from, public/private/mirrored ect, just keep it in flowing in a usable form. Add in voice chat too
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
they pass each keystroke in real time to the servers.
go ahead, type carefully..
they'll see each letter as typed and "fingerprint" you that way
the typing speed and corrected mispellings even without you hitting 'search'
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
My understanding, other than encrypting the search terms, nothing much else has changed - sure this prevents GoogleSharing from knowing what kind of porn I like (not that I care), but as the article says, they still get the IP addresses. What does this mean for the truly paranoid? GoogleSharing and Google could easily exchange a bit of motivational cash, maybe the NSA has a box jammed on the incoming side of GoogleSharing to siphon off the IP addresses, with another in Google itself to get the actual search terms. What is Moxie Marlinspike getting from all this? Warm fuzzy feelings don't keep the lights on and food on the table.
It seems a lot of people use Google as a portal to their favourite sites. So if they are interested in buying some new shoes, or a holiday, they will return to Google each time and type in their query and then visit the preferred sites each time rather than, as you or I might, doing this once and thereafter visiting the sites direct/bookmarking said sites. I guess this is along the lines of what they mean. For instance, imagine some guy likes to slack off and browse for cheap DVDs on friday afternoons at work - if they can identify a regular pattern, and even perhaps tie it back to his GMail account, they can sell this info to a company who then fires off an email about their massive DVD sale at friday lunch time and can be almost certain he'll hit their site up first.