Posted on 05/25/2010 10:22:04 AM PDT by Celerity
Hello everyone !
I'm an independent consultant, meaning I work at several different locations throughout the day, week or month.
At some of these locations I have an office, or at least a server room with a console. I check Free Republic while at those consoles.
One of my clients is an enemy of the american way. I am there now.
So to keep this site off my "obvious" history and avoid questions, I'll browse to Free Republic via Google:
Go to www.google.com In the search field I type "freerep". This will fill in the rest in the field below (FreeRepublic) At this point, I click that link and it takes me directly there. This is a commonly used feature of Google. This keeps the direct entry out of my "drop down" list on the browser, and the query itself out of my recent searches.
Today that's changed. It's no longer displaying a direct link to Free Republic. Instead it takes me to a usual google search for it - where I have to click on the first link in the list (Which happens to be Free Republic). It's added it to my recent searches list. (awwwww.... It's not important)
I am aware of how popular web tools are politically charged, but is what I'm seeing another attention-getter to Google to attempt to push FreeRepublic off of it's results ?
Any thoughts ?
How about you skip all that nonsense, hit CTRL-SHIFT-P which puts both Mozilla and IE into private browsing? Then you can just type in www.freerepublic.com and leave no trace.
Take a laptop along on your jobs. Problem ended!
recent versions of browsers have the option to open a window or tab for private browsing. see if you can do that. This option leaves no history, cookies, etc.
Ha! Just messing with ya.
You hit the WHITEWATER link on Drudge...
(showing my age, there...)
Yeah, 86 the lib.
Been in the same situation, I used a live linux cd with a proxy server over a ssh tunnel that was used with a firewall puncher.
The only thing they could see is that it was suspicious activity and they sent me an email to make sure my computer wasn’t compromised. But I used it for weeks before that happened.
I don’t think they check their logs regularly.
Even if they check, as long as the activity isn’t currently occurring and you are already gone, likely they will never know what you did. Due to the nature of your work, maybe it isn’t even suspicous.
Oprea Browser has a surf private which keeps no session info.
Also, you can use a linux thumbdrive and use the browser through the virtual system. I always keep one of these in my briefcase.
I like skweezer.com
good for low bandwidth situations and
also is good method to see if the internet can see your web site.
http://skweezer.com/s.aspx?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freerepublic.com
Can’t you use your phone to check up on FR?
Only if his laptop can get on the internet independently, e.g., by a MiFi.
Oh, wait....what?
Great Tip, Thank you!
In order to find freerepublic.com, your desktop must do a lookup to get the IP address. That lookup is usually handled by a local DNS server, which only goes to the larger Internet root DNS servers if necessary.
Those lookups can be logged, including the requesting IP address.
Also, it isn't unusual for a company to install a transparent proxy server that intercepts every HTTP request that goes outside their firewall and check to see if the page is in cache. That can log everything as well.
At the end of your session, you could go into Tools, then Internet Options and delete your history. You just have to remember to do it.
Thanks for the inputs - But I have no problem masking my activities here.
The question was really about how Google is now handling the request.
Danger Will Robinson! Private Browsing is not what you think it is! The browser may not keep a history but:
Bottom line is that you must assume that EVERY packet
you send is public information.
A router may be logging each local and remote ip/name pair
A lan based web sniffer may be logging every packet (think
of AT&T, Sprint, and others that have little rooms connected
to the internet backbone routers. (do a traceroute sometime)
A DNS server may be logging each DNS request
WiFi air capture can log and reconstitute all browsing, files downloaded, email, chat
If you have Satellite based ISP skygrabber can reconstitute all browsing, files downloaded, email, chat
I also have this. Relatively cheap for surfing if you don’t do a lot of multimedia. Works great too, anywhere there’s Sprint cellular service.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband
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