Think You’ve Disabled Google’s Web History Tracking? Check Again. Late Friday evening, I tweeted out that, for some reason unbeknownst to me, Google’s Web History tracking “feature” (the one that keeps tabs on every search you’ve made for sake of tailoring ads to your tastes and/or creeping you out) had seemingly been enabled on my account. This wouldn’t be too strange in most cases — as an opt-out service, Web History is enabled for everyone by default. The problem? I’d manually disabled it years ago. Following my tweet, a few people responded in tune; they were certain they’d disabled it long ago — but sure enough, there was all of their history going back anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half. In each case, the person is positive they’d disabled it months ago. I brought it up in our internal backchannel, and sure enough: other TechCrunch employees had seen the same thing — long ago, in fact.
Mozilla: Do Not Track Mozilla is a global, nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Web better. We emphasize principle over profit, and believe that the Web is a shared public resource to be cared for, not a commodity to be sold. We answer to no one but you and believe it is crucial to put you in control of your online experience. Mozilla Firefox offers a Do Not Track feature that lets you express a preference not to be tracked by websites. Do Not Track is a step toward putting you in control of the way your information is collected and used online. Yes. No, you will still see ads with Do Not Track enabled. Do Not Track is one of many privacy solutions. Do Not Track may interfere with some personalized services you enjoy. This feature is not enabled by default. <p> On Mac OS X, go to Firefox > Preferences… > Privacy. Click to check the box next to "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked". Companies are starting to support Do Not Track, but you may not notice any changes initially.
The Dangers of Web Tracking - The Great Privacy Debate In a 1963 Supreme Court opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren observed that "the fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a great danger to the privacy of the individual." The advances have only accelerated since then, along with the dangers. Today, as companies strive to personalize the services and advertisements they provide over the Internet, the surreptitious collection of personal information is rampant. Most of us view personalization and privacy as desirable things, and we understand that enjoying more of one means giving up some of the other. This tradeoff has always been part of our lives as consumers and citizens. Even though the Internet is a very social place, we tend to access it in seclusion. But our sense of anonymity is largely an illusion.
About Empowering Users Rather than making judgments about which trackers are good or bad, Ghostery puts power directly into users’ hands, giving them the relevant and accurate information they need to make the decision that’s best for them. Ghostery users can block all tracking easily, block tracking from particular companies, or choose to only allow tracking on the websites that they trust the most. Strength In Numbers The Ghostery community is one of the strongest and most sophisticated on the web. More than 10 million users have opted into the “Ghostrank™” panel, anonymously supplying tracker information back to Ghostery to help improve the service and foster a more transparent internet. Free and Easy Ghostery is, and will always be, free—no hidden costs, no trying to sell a ‘premium version’ or other related products.
Google Dashboard Offers New Privacy Controls Google has launched a new privacy dashboard — technically just called Google Dashboard — that gives users quicker access to, and more control over, the personal information stored in Google’s databases. The dashboard is a one-stop shop for managing this data and the settings that are associated with the Google products you use when signed in to your Google account. “We recognize how important our users’ trust is, so we’re looking for ways to be more transparent,” says Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety. How to access Google Dashboard Google Dashboard can be reached by going to www.google.com/dashboard or by going to your Google Account page. You’ll have to be logged in to your Google account first and, because the information in Google Dashboard is sensitive, Google requires a second login before you can access it. What’s included in Google Dashboard At the beginning, not all Google products are included in Google Dashboard. Final thoughts
Google's privacy settings – controlling your information | Technology Google's settings can be changed to prevent giving too much information away. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images Google provides tools for controlling your personal information, and a handy dashboard for your various accounts. Use the privacy tools page to opt out of tracking. The dashboard shows your use of most Google services, even if the accounts are under different names. Block tracking While Google's "opt out" cookies are useful, there are independent browser plug-ins that aim to block wider attempts to track you. Private browsing Many web browsers now include a "private browsing" feature – InPrivate Browsing in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Incognito in Google's Chrome, and Private Browsing in Firefox and Apple's Safari – to protect your browsing habits from other family members, but they also help protect your privacy online. Restrict your use of Gmail, Facebook and similar sites to private browser windows – other sites will find it harder to track the connection.
Google Lets Users Opt Out Of Analytics Tracking, But Doesn't Expect Many Will Google has announced the launch of a browser plugin that lets users avoid being tracked by Google Analytics. The company warned two months ago, in the midst of loud privacy-related complaints, that it was working on such a tool. Google says the plugin will work in the following browsers: Internet Explorer, versions 7 and 8Mozilla Firefox, 3.x and higherGoogle Chrome It’s not available for Safari, but Google’s Brian Richardson hinted that may change in the future by saying today’s announcement is a “first step” and that Google hopes to “build continuous improvements moving forward.” In its announcement today, Google positions this as a win for user control and privacy. It’s anyone’s guess how many web searchers will even be aware that the plugin exists, much less use it. “We’re not sure [what to expect]. On a related note, Google also announced today that website owners can tell Google Analytics to use only a portion of a visitor’s IP address for geographic reports.
Frequently asked questions about Google's privacy settings Nightly News and the Associated Press report: Beginning today, Google started operating under a streamlined privacy policy that enables the Internet's most powerful company to dig even deeper into the lives of its more than 1 billion users. Google says the changes will make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company to create more helpful and compelling services. Related story: Clear your Google search history now Here's a look at some of the frequently asked questions about Google's new privacy settings. Q: How will Google's privacy changes affect users? A: Google is combining more than 60 different privacy policies so it will be able to throw all the data it gathers about each of its logged-in users into personal dossiers. Users who write a memo on Google's online word processing program, Docs, might be alerted to the misspelling of the name of a friend or co-worker a user has communicated with on Google's Gmail. A: Yes. A: The U.S.
Tracking Yourself Online: The Power of Google Alerts | Keyword Connects Blog Think Google is just a gigantic search engine that knows everything about everything? Think again. Turn Google to your advantage to track what homeowners and competitors are saying about you online. A lot of people believe that Google sees all, knows all. They’re watching your every move online. And they know everything that the general public is saying about you. I’ll give you no argument. They’re called Google Alerts, and they’re a great tool for every home improvement company that wants to monitor how their name is used on the Web. In short, Google Alerts allow you to monitor online news, postings or pages that contain whatever keyword or phrase you would like. I recommend home improvement companies set up Google Alerts for phrases that include your company’s name, your own name and even those of your direct competitors. Think about it: now you can easily and constantly monitor your company’s name and reputation online. How do you set up a Google Alert? Go to the Google Alerts page.
traceroute.org How People Broadcast Their Locations Without Meaning To People were up in arms this week about the privacy implications of news that the iPhone gathers location information and stores it in a file on the user’s computer. But experts say that smart-phone owners are unknowingly taking a much bigger risk with information about where they go all day. During a presentation at the computer security conference Source Boston, Ben Jackson of Mayhemic Labs and Larry Pesce, a senior security consultant with NWN, described the way photos taken by many phones are routinely encoded with latitude and longitude tags. “It is definitely true that folks don’t [understand] the risk,” says Jackson. For example, by looking at the location metadata stored with pictures posted through one man’s anonymous Twitter account, the researchers were able to pinpoint his likely home address. A few smart phones, such as the BlackBerry, leave the geotagging feature turned off by default. The researchers have struggled to find an effective way to spread this message.
Email Tracking: It Gets Worse When I wrote Monday about the new didtheyreadit.com privacy-invading email tracking system, I had no idea that an even more invasive system has been on the market for two years or so. This system, called readnotify.com, was pointed out by commenter Brian Parsons. readnotify.com is an email tracking system that uses Web bugs (like didtheyreadit) and also uses a trick involving IFRAMEs (unlike didtheyreadit). The IFRAME trick cannot be disabled by the standard countermeasure of turning off remote image loading. There may not be an easy way to disable it in today’s email software, short of turning off HTML email entirely. Worse yet, readnotify offers a service that lets anyone put hidden tracking bugs in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and other OLE-compliant document formats. The vulnerability in Word that readnotify exploits was discovered back in 2000 by Richard M.