They Know All About You

[NoJo]

Well-written and scary article from Guardian Online about Search Engines and user privacy:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1859785,00.html

 

[Aurora Black]

This should be a lesson to us all. We must always use correct spelling and punctuation when performing a search.

 

[Weird Harold]

Well-written and scary article from Guardian Online about Search Engines and user privacy:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1859785,00.html

It's not just search engines. Go to Interent Options/advanced tab and set the Cookie options to ask befor eplacing a cookie and go back to that article to see just how many sites other than "Guardian.uk" are setting datamining cookies on your system.

An Guardian.uk is far from the worst of the news sites about requesting cookies and domains like Juno, Yahoo, MSN, news.ABC et al take as much as five minutes to reject all of the cookie requests on a dial-up connection.

 

[cantdog]

Search engines are a turnkey; the net is far far less useful without them. So much so that you have little option but to employ them. We may harangue them to store all this crap offline. We may even ask them to lay off storing all this crap. We may harangue our various governments to keep their needle noses the hell out. But I'll give you three guesses how it'd work out if we did.

The only answer is to have the query be anonymous. Encryption when you send messages, and anonymous logons when you use the net otherwise. The arguments are old ones, but here we go again:

If you appear on the net with an anonymous identity, one which traces to some other place, someone will have to do some work to figure out who owns the identity. Of course it can be done, but the point is that they will have to work to do it.

If you encrypt your messages, casual snoops see gobbledegook. Of course, given time, the encryption can be made to yield up the content. What science can encrypt, science can decrypt. So what? Again, they would have to really want it. Time on a big machine is valuable, and IF you encrypt, they have to tie one up a while to window peep.

This puts you back where you are, usually, in real life; that is, ordinarily private, unless some pressing reason makes it worth their while to pry. If you just blather it out there for all the world to see, right from home with your numbers all hanging out there, then a prying, spying, snooping windowpeeper in some office someplace can see it all with the push of a mouse button. And they have no shortage of windowpeepers in all kinds of offices, these days.

Your choice.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

"A church lady in the midwest, whose quest for Christian quilted wall hangings was interspersed with inquiries about vibrators and arousing frigid wives, is probably easy for anyone in her congregation to identify."

Ouch!! Poor lady...

 

[rgraham666]

"A church lady in the midwest, whose quest for Christian quilted wall hangings was interspersed with inquiries about vibrators and arousing frigid wives, is probably easy for anyone in her congregation to identify."

Ouch!! Poor lady...

Sarahh? Is that you?

Oh wait! Narf! "Arousing frigid wives" That sure ain't our sarahh.

 

[Oblimo]

I'll pass on the pie, Pastor.

Here are three AOL searches from the same user:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/oblimo/pies.gif

More AOL search log fun on good ol' SomethingAwful.

 

[CharleyH]

Well-written and scary article from Guardian Online about Search Engines and user privacy:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/search/story/0,,1859785,00.html

They know as much as you do about me! YET. Scary.

Edit to add - an interesting post, sj. What is your take on the article?

 

[Oblimo]

The only answer is to have the query be anonymous. Encryption when you send messages, and anonymous logons when you use the net otherwise.

Amen.

And for the love of God, make sure you're signed out of your Google Account before you run a Google search!

 

[CharleyH]

A bump and ...