Posted on 11/03/2015 7:16:32 AM PST by dennisw
My question to freepers is should I delete all google, bing, yahoo cookies periodically? Does this help any? I really like google images and maps and same that bing and yahoo have for maps and images.... So how do I minimize their data collection? I already use track-me-not on chrome and firefox. This program makes useless random searches a few times per minute so that my own searches get lost in it. But I wonder how effective this strategy is?
IOW duck duck go etc that do not track you are limited search engines///// Plus does google, bing, yahoo insert cookies anyway that track duck duck go searches?
This is a very good book that tells you all about the US Government data collection on you plus private corporations data gathering. What is done with the data google gathers? It is sold to data brokers. This data is useful in advertising and knowing consumer trends and buying trends on a geographical (zip code) basis and sorted out in other ways too. Such as estimated incomes and estimated race etc etc
I knew all this data collection and storage (is forever!!!! and never deleted) was going on but this book showed me it is worse than I thought
I am signed into facebook right now......I use it minimally and with a bogus name. Do you think the facebook cookie tracks google and bing searches like a parasite?
I use bing a lot for searches. I have always figured the google cookie on my computers tracks bing searches in addition to google searches. Do you know about this?
Which browser are you running?
—Firefox—
TOR
Ixquick
No, one isn’t watching the searches you do on another. Cookies don’t work that way. Cookies are just a small amount of information that a website gives your computer, then asks for it back when you return to (i.e.: ask for more information from) their website later - that way it has a unique identifier it can use to do useful things like remember what you put in a shopping cart even though you didn’t sign into the site (it gave you an ID for that cart the you put something in it, and upon return asks for the cart ID so it can show you the contents of that particular cart).
The issue with cookies is that when you go to any website, parts of that page may come from multiple websites: the main content from the site you went to, but ads served from other advertising-service websites, the FB “thumb” icon from Facebook.com, etc - so you go to a page, and several websites know you’ve gone to that page because their content is being aggregated to create that page. Those websites don’t necessarily know exactly what information you’re entering or what each other is providing, but they can deduce a lot of other info about where you are, where you’ve been, and what kind of person visits that combination of sites.
The “google cookie” doesn’t track your bing searches. What may happen however is bing records what search result you went to, the site you went to is populated by google ads, and google knows what site you’ve been to because they gave you the ads and necessarily know what your IP address etc is so they could send the ad to your computer - no “cookies” involved, but still over time they can deduce from your usage patterns who you are, what devices you have, what websites you peruse, and generally work up a profile about you ... and somewhere along the line persuade you to reveal really personal information like name, age, etc at which point they’ve got a really detailed model of you, and no amount of deleting cookies from your computer will make even a meaningful dent in their tracking of you.
Consider this (paraphrased hypothetical):
You walk into an Apple store and get an iPod Touch (to wit: highly portable web browser, WiFi based, no personal-data-revealing cellular connectivity) for cash. Turn it on, disable all forms of tracking you can before it even starts functioning, no ID. Start browsing the web from some store’s free WiFi service (never from home). You go to FreeRepublic.com, view a thread, and visit the source article page which includes ads (most of them) - immediately, Google is aware of your approximate location (most WiFi networks have been geo-located to within meters), knows what kind of device you’re using, knows what ad-laden web page you visited, and might know you got there from FreeRepublic.com (so you’re probably a right-wing sociopolitical activist). Much of the resources you’re using are hosted by Amazon, so they’re watching all of this too; order something online and you might be unwittingly using an Amazon or Google financial transaction service, so now they can link your name, address, credit card number, etc. Likewise, Facebook is watching every time they provide their “like” thumb icon and other common image files, and the first time you log into Facebook they can attach this new device and its records to everything they already know about your FB ID. If you’re smart enough to avoid providing any personally identifying info (no Facebook, no online ordering, etc) they can still build up a profile of where you are, what you view, times of your typical activity, etc. In addition, the device (being rather sophisticated) itself communicates with various websites just to provide you with basic convenient services. All that, and you haven’t even gotten out of the Starbucks you’re using for the anonymizing free WiFi after taking the device out of its box for the first time and finishing a coffee.
Want real anonymity? turn it off.
And realize that even turning it off provides information: suddenly you’re not fitting your typical usage patterns...matching with certain known profiles, providing prediction of what you’re doing even when offline.
I swear they still are tracking. I have deleted cookies using CCleaner https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner and re-open the the web browser and soon after logging into a few places (as the cookies record your account) I start seeing the same ads and news stories. Many companies share information. So once you log in say to Amazon the information is shared across the sites you go to.
I know google was looking for a way to track you without cookies. The computers ip address does not change often so newspaper sites will say you reached your total number of free articles even if you close the browser and delete cookies.
With google, it won’t really help. There is a special, persistent cookie that google uses (called the google PREF cookie), and that will just get recreated if you delete it. Even if you block google from installing cookies, most browsers will let it reinstall this cookie anyway. The only way I know to block it (short of blocking google with a firewall or something) is to install 3rd party anti-cookie extensions/add-ons.
No cookie for Google search
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/no-cookie-for-google-search/
Click “Tools” / “Options” / “Security”. On that page you should see an option “Remember Passwords for Sites”. Deselect that option if you don’t want Firefox to remember passwords. Then, click on “Saved Passwords”. That should bring up a dialog box showing all the passwords Firefox has remembered. You can delete the saved passwords one at a time or click “Remove All” to wipe them all out.
I’m on Firefox 41.0 - your mileage may vary if you’re on an earlier version.
The Windows 10 privacy saga moves to older OS versions
Microsoft has been accused of spying on its users with some of the features that it implemented in Windows 10, and the company not only refrains from commenting too much on these claims but it has also released some updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 computers, which appear to enhance data collection on older OS versions.
A number of updates that Redmond has recently released “introduce the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service†in Windows 7 and 8.1 and “add telemetry points to the User Account Control (UAC) feature to collect information on elevations that come from low integrity levels,†as the company says in the official KB pages.
The updates in question are KB3068708, KB3022345, KB3075249, and KB3080149, and you can find their full description in the box after the jump.
I've removed the four updates listed above and turned-off my auto update feature.
No problems.
I dumped it.
Just use DuckDuckGo and be done with Google:)
It was probably set to delete all cookies. In the CCleaner options section you can tell it which cookies you want to keep; that way you won't always to keep logging on.
looks good...do you use it?
btt
My browser deletes on close each time.
I also don’t have any of the video add on installed since they have their own type of cookies that you cannot manually delete.
I also don’t use google. It sucks.
You might want to give this a try just to see if you’re free of everything you think you’re free of.
http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.