from freenet.org.nz

The Problem

While Google.com
is a brilliant search site, and while its proprieters claim to abide
by their ‘do no evil’ motto, there is one practice that threatens to
expose you to much evil down the track.

Google places a
cookie on every user’s computer, timed to expire in 2038. With this
cookie, they can track you and log your entire search history. In fact,
Google has recently indicated that they won’t be deleting people’s search histories.

While this cookie
may not directly identify you by name, an analysis of your search
history over time can definitely help an attacker (or abusive
government authority) to identify you personally.

Many people fight back by setting up an anonymous proxy for all their web surfing, but this
can slow down their accesses terribly. Such slowness sooner or later drives most people to
revert to direct non-anonymous internet access.

A Solution

In summary, the
solution is to clear all long-lasting cookies, set your browser to
not keep cookies between restarts, and divert all google requests out
through an anonymous proxy.

This will protect
your privacy as far as google is concerned, but allow you to enjoy
full-speed browsing with other sites.

Follow these
simple steps:

  1. Get access to an anonymous web
    proxy. A common favourite is the Tor
    network

  2. Be using Mozilla
    Firefox    .

  3. Install the FoxyProxy
    extension for Firefox

  4. Within FoxyProxy configuration,
    add an entry for your anonymous proxy. Within this proxy, add 2
    whitelist wildcard rules, with the patterns:

    • http://*.google.com/*
    • http://google.com/

  5. Clear out all your browser cookies

  6. Set Firefox so that it only keeps
    cookies till you close Firefox (Edit/Preferences/Privacy/Cookies)

  7. If there are any other sites that
    may be unduly logging your activity, and don’t have a refular log
    deletion policy, add some entries for these sites into your
    anonymous proxy matchlist in FoxyProxy.

With these
measures in place, all your regular web requests will go out directly
to the internet, while all requests for *.google.com will go via the
Tor anonymity network. Also, since your cookies are getting deleted
every time you close/restart Firefox, then Google will no longer be
able to build a history of your web surfing.

I appreciate that
for some amongst us, this is like closing the barn door after the
horse has bolted. But at least we can arrest the extent of the
privacy violation which Google is perpetrating.

Conclusion

The searches you
send out to Google are your business. You have the right to prevent
Google from accumulating a perpetual history of your web searching.
Use that right.