Anything Google which is installed on your PC is the most pernicious spyware. I would uninstall it all, guard against it, and stay signed out of Google sites since they can only spy on you when signed in.
Use the stable search box in Firefox, IE or Opera which won't allow Google search to spy on you. It's the only way I use google, except their maps and shopping searches where I stay signed out.
If it wasn't for Google Reader I'd be able to completely drop Google products.
I'm glad the ME SE did the job for you! I know the updated version now included in Win 8 renamed to WD will find just about anything tucked away they try to slip in on you!
That's a good find there! I know a select number of ISPs also track web browsing habits of their customers for companies as well. The free email accounts are full of crud you don't want and didn't ask for!
Bugs are abundant with a great number of freebies as well as free to try and even sharewares at times. Some are browser hijackers while others are data collectors. You may even run into keyloggers if your system protections are upto par.
With IE the site there found 15 and 83 on the 64bit flavor of FireFox, the WaterFox browser and opted each.
Googelitis is too familiar and why I've often advised some to avoid Google and use Bing. You often run into ask.com extras for seeing that made the default search as well as the ask toolbar annoyance you leave or be sure to leave unchecked. One of the main reasons I preferred IE 8 over 9 was the loss of the search box where you selected the default search provider there!
Last edited by Night Hawk; 17 Jan 2013 at 19:48. Reason: Additional information
I see I have some comrades in arms when It comes to google. Some thing I have never mentioned before is, I have actually searched the registry and deleted any reference I could find to google. I do it everyonce in while cause googie will slip back in.
Oh, and crapware exists because a large segment of users have crappy practices.
Last edited by HammerHead; 17 Jan 2013 at 20:08. Reason: crapware
Google is notorious for slipping in things! Another often overlooked item as pointed out earlier is all those free addon toolbars for browsers that love to open doors for other things! The best addon if any found over the years for just about any browser which can be a good help in spotting questionable sites is the Web Of Trust tool.
A few other IE security bars can alert you to bad sites fast enough when some place immediately attempts to stuff a trojan on where you can close the browser on the spot when the alerts sounds off still leaves you open to certain extent to other types of exploitations without you knowledge. The AVG toolbar intended to filter sites as well as some others like Clam av's own Security Toolbar can be a help and hinderance at the same time.
Besides the addons and getting back to the main topic the most often caught off guard bombs dropped on you do come through otherwise widely accepted sources! You don't necessarily get zinged right away while the bomb has still been dropped in your lap! The surprises often come later down the road.
The Consumer Opt-out site linked not only requires enabling cookies, it also requires enabling third-party cookies. Not like it matters much, but the site is an actual online advertisers and they do warn about the tracking capabilities of the cookies. Anyway...
The chances are that the advertisers are replacing the cookie/script based tracking by tracking your browser's fingerprint. No need to install anything on your computer, just let the webserver and your browser duke it out. Here's a write up about the browser fingerprint:
Even without cookies, a browser leaves a trail of crumbs | Ars Technica
And you can test your browser's fingerprint here:
Panopticlick
The tracking resulting in ad pasting all ended when I started Opting out about a year ago. I only notice it start up on a machine I haven't kept current my Opt outs.
I didn't notice its a cookie but the documentation says that this is how they tell advertisers not to track, under an industry initiative to avoid regulation. So it seems trustworthy.
If you can find any more about it let's air it here. Opt Out of Network Advertising
While I agree with you...
Firefox uses Google's safe browsing service, that shows up in the FF "about:config" as default string:
The way I've found out about this by setting my default home page to Bing and used a local proxy server on my PC to monitor the traffic. It's been pure incidental, but I've been surprised that starting FF with Bing makes a number of connections to Google sites. As the matter of fact, more connection to Google than to Bing. The only way I could stop the madness is to change the above and other Google server related FF default strings to localhost. I am a big boy and don't need Google tell me which sites I could not visit anyway.Code:browser.safebrowsing.reportURL http://safebrowsing.clients.google.c...owsing/reports? browser.safebrowsing.updateURL http://safebrowsing.clients.google.c...SION%&pver=2.2
Is this a backdoor Google tracking for Firefox? It's quite possible, especially if you take into account that Google and Mozilla just started a three year contract, worth an estimated $750M. If that's the case, it is not a bad investment that rides on the used to be underdog's back...
While I have no doubts about your experience with NAI, I just don't trust advertisers.
This is what I've noticed at the NAI opt-out website:
You could also be correct that the cookies are used for not delivering ads, but... Qoute from the NAI website:
Like one could tell, which advertisment company delivered the actual ad. Not to mention that they could still collect this information and sell it to other companies that are not members of NAI. There are plenty of them...Opting out does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the company or companies from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your web preferences and usage patterns.
Online advertisement in the US is about $40B business. That's a lot of reasons not to trust advertisers with allowing cookies for them...
PS: As a side note... Google tracks all of our activities at this forum via Google Analytics, provided no Ghostery, DoNotTrackMe, etc., used...
Yea that's why I use filehippo, there stuff is pretty clean and free of crap. CNET is know for crapware,they even offer to install stuff like bablyon toolbar which is annoying to remove on my clients pcs.See it so often. Lots and lots of toolbars with homepages being changed
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