Google Web History: legitimised Big Brother?
 

http://www.google.com/history

Google History is an opt-in service that allows you to view not just your search history, but your entire browsing history. The Google Toolbar phones home for each page load to let Google know which URLs you're browsing.

However, this is just a legitimate frontend for what Google have been doing for ages - when you have PageRank display enabled, their toolbar already phones home for every single page you visit.

Even though it's only a URL that is stored there's a lot you can tell about the user from analysing their history, and some sites (such as competing search engines) will reveal extra detail due to them using variables in the URL (HTTP GET rather than HTTP POST). If you search for "midgets ass fucking" on Yahoo then the URL will clearly show this.

I wonder how many of you guys in adult have PR (or web history) enabled and just surf away, completely unaware that every single site you visit is being recorded by Google... there's a reason I only have the toolbar installed on IE, which I basically use only to check the PR of a few sites.

Don't forget that plain old Google Search already sets a long held cookie which can be used to tie every search you've ever made to a single PC...

Discuss.

The more technology in our lives, the more we give our privacy away.

It's not just technology, it's the fact that so much of what you do on the net can potentially come back to Google.

- Search for web sites
- Watch/search Youtube videos
- Browse the web
- Send & receive email
- Read & write in usenet newsgroups

There are also the indirect services, which can collect data about you even if you never use any of Googles services, but visit a site which inlines them:

- Adsense
- Google analytics

Every time I check out a Google service I haven't seen before I'm reminded that I'm part of the machine, when my browser prefills the login details.

:2 cents: Google is become a huge depository for data collection...it's starting to get scary. And you better bet that the government already is probably trying to get access into all the data Google collects. But you shouldn't have to worry about anything if your not doing anything illegal... :2 cents:

I was thinking about how in 100 years the great great grandkids of teenagers of today will be able to read all of the facebook and myspaces and email and forums that their great great grandparents posted that will last forever... even if they delete their myspace or facebook now it is still somewhere (in alot of places... cache's and archives). It's only going to get more pervasive.

It is still spooky when I can find newsgroup postings I made over 10 years ago unaware then that they are now forever.......

its not big brother .. they usually prove themselves in gear to better the user experience, help filter resultes, present what people are really looking for.

and its opt-in, for the nuts, simply opt out

Thats actually what googles goal is

I forgot to mention Google Accelerator - it's basically a web caching service so they not only know which URLs you visit, but since all content passes through Google they can keyword match or even STORE it. This includes password protected content and other private material which would not normally be accessable to everyone.

All these gimmicky services have the potential to increase their commercial position by learning surfer's habits, but what happens once it's used for more than simple marketing purposes?

How do I opt out from adsense and google analytics?

Here's a sample URL I pulled from my logs, you can see it reveals quite a bit about the page you're visiting, and have visited

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmwv=1&utmn=1620953333&utmcs=ISO-8859-1&utmsr=1360x1024&utmsc=32-bit&utmul=en-us&utmje=0&utmfl=9.0%20%20r47&utmdt=French%20F irst%20Time%20Girls%20!%20totally%20uncensored&utm hn=galleries.rebootcash.com&utmr=http://www.nudepetals.com/&utmp=/explicite/cc=1555942/tp=18/pipi1/&utmac=UA-688444-7&utmcc=_

Deconstructing a Google Analytics phone home

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif
?utmwv=1
&utmn=2035243671
&utmcs=UTF-8 (charset?)
&utmsr=1360x1024 (screen res)
&utmsc=32-bit (color depth?)
&utmul=en-us (browser language)
&utmje=0
&utmfl=9.0%20%20r47 (?? directx vers?)
&utmcn=1
&utmdt=Airliners.net%20Articles%3A%20Difficult%20A pproach%20%2B%20Short%20Runway%20%3D%20Challenge (page title)
&utmhn=www.airliners.net (hostname)
&utmr=http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=airport+runway+approach+photos (referer? I don't recall using google.co.in...)
&utmp=/articles/read.main?id=8 (URI)
&utmac=UA-80588-1
&utmcc=__utma%3D57170106.2035243671.1189111640.118 9111640.1189111640.1%3B%2B__utmb%3D57170106%3B%2B_ _utmc%3D57170106%3B%2B__utmz%3D57170106.1189111640 .1.1.utmccn%3D(organic)%7Cutmcsr%3

Why do they need to know the title of the page? May as well just encode and submit the page body while we're at it. :Graucho

Former Agent Says Google and CIA in Partnership

Wake up. :2 cents:

pretty sure it anonymises all that info after a certain period of time

have you ever used google analytics? why do they need the title? well they do rank your most viewed pages on your site in your dashboard and give you tons of useful information based on your OWN visitors because of those stats...

you guys are hilarious, if you're so worried about people getting into your privacy online, do 1 simple thing to stop it, UNPLUG YOUR COMPUTER. nobody forces you to go online and give out your information to all these places...

its been said in this thread already, if you don't like it, DONT USE IT, i bet everyone of you nuts who bash google for collecting info on you, use google daily to look up 135131 different topics...

Right. :1orglaugh

i used google toolbar for one day when it came out and have never used a toolbar since

Thanks for the link to that article about Google - CIA relationship, i knew something was fishy. Google always had friends in high places, they are in bed with the government, just like every big US corporation anyway..

http://www.techtalk.net/wp-content/u...ig-brother.jpg

Rowan, sending back the page title is a very useful thing for google. If nothing else, it would allow them to spot major discrepancies between what is cached in their servers and what is actually on the page. Used correctly, this might actually be a good tool for spotting sneaky redirects and other issues.

Just delete the cookies and history once in a while and you be OK plus who cares if they know where you went if you didn't do anything illegal.
Also who cares what they store as long as at the end of the day they are a better serach engine.
I remmember people screeming about Microsoft a few years ago about things they did. Now the tied turned and people are on Google for it.
Forget that crap. Just do the work you need and move on.

exactly, its probably part of the algorithm to detect blackhat shit and remove them from listings

The more technology in our lives

Yeah, I'm sure blackhats would use google analytics on their site. :1orglaugh Maybe noob ones. :error

C'mon - do you really think that Google maintains a separate database for each individual site, and does not do any cross linking between their other dbs (including other services), or do aggregate data mining?

This thread is more about clandestine collection of data which in the long term could have some serious privacy implications as your 'profile' becomes more detailed. Most people who use their services would be unaware of this.

I don't deny that they provide a valuable service, I'm just concerned about the long term implications of their data collection as they move into more and more areas of internet services. It's going to be hard NOT to use Google soon. As mentioned previously - how do I opt out of Google Analytics? Stop loading any site which has them inlined? That's not an acceptable solution...

You don't read well, do you? if the google toolbar is reporting back, and millions of surfers have the toolbar, Google will know exactly where surfers end up when they click a listing on google. If the end result doesn't match the original URL in the listing, then the site could be marked as a redirect and marked for deletion.

it isn't just webmasters that use google stuff. :error

I agree with your last sentence, however I thought we were discussing Google Analytics which is a "webmaster opts in" service. I can't see any experienced BH webmasters using GA, unless there was something they could exploit.

AFAIK the toolbar does not return the page title. Here's a phone home I just captured:

GET /search?
client=navclient-auto
&googleip=O;74.125.19.147;1640
&iqrn=EJBC
&orig=0n_6O
&iqst=404 (return status)
&ie=UTF-8
&oe=UTF-8
&querytime=lQB
&features=Rank:
&q=info:http%3a%2f%2fwww%2esomesite%2ecom%2fadadsd fss
&ch=733908249866
HTTP/1.0

Note that the toolbar also sends the Google ID cookie.

why blackhatters don't wanna see stats on their site in detail?

1) It's Opt-In.
2) You need a Google account for this; otherwise it will just use the same information, but not tie it directly to an "account", per se.
3) If you installed 'Google Desktop Search', it doesn't matter, because that's already tracking you by default.
4) Google is a corporation built to find and share data. It's not your "buddy", it's not your "bro."

More On What Google (and Probably A Lot of Others) Know

Searchblog reader Adam asked me:

1) "Given a list of search terms, can Google produce a list of people
who searched for that term, identified by IP address and/or Google
cookie value?"

2) "Given an IP address or Google cookie value, can Google produce a
list of the terms searched by the user of that IP address or cookie
value?"

I put these to Google. To its credit, it rapidly replied that the answer in both cases is "yes." Just FYI.


http://battellemedia.com/archives/002283.php


AOL released a portion of their search data last year which allows us to see a small trail of search results for individual computers. They pulled the files pretty quickly but they had already been downloaded and put to use by many sites. There are plenty of questionable searches but the important thing is that with a bit of research many can eventually be linked to a specific person.

One example of a questionable trail I found with a quick search:

http://www.aolstalker.com/310068.html

This could be a shared PC, or it could be one guy. Wants to know about bibles verses one minute, then the next day he's looking for topless und*rage and inc*st related photos. :321GFY

How many of us have searched for our full name? I have, and I'm not being narcissistic: my name is littered all over the net from many years of posting to newgroups and mailing lists (some as far back as the early 1990s)

I've also done the occasional search for old friends.

If someone at Google (or any SE which creates a trail) looked at the complete search history for my PC (which admittedly would probably be fragmented due to upgrades, reinstalling OS, or deliberately deleting Google's cookie) they could probably figure out my name with a bit of research. For example, my personal site is hosted within the same class C IP range that my browser uses.