DISQUS

charlieanzman · 1 year ago

Phil - This has been a factor in search (and an overused tactic by SEO's) for a long time. It's part of what makes it all work (and why, possibly, Cuil launched before it was ready??). They didn't have the search term 'inventory'. Yahoo and Google both offer opt-out out of search habits (profiling). My current concern is MS and IE 8. By my count the tool bar (invisible) processes (9) are loaded by default. The only way to offload them is a registry scan. Bottom line? Your ISP has a complete record of every IP you visited. Privacy? Security?

Phil Glockner · 1 year ago

Charlie, I followed you up to the registry scan part. Do you mean hand-editing the registry to prevent them from loading?

In a general sense, it is true that the local ISP would potentially have a complete record of TCP connection requests, and DNS lookups (unless you are using a service like OpenDNS).. but I guess what worries me more about a browser being in constant communication with a web service is that it is basically tracking a lot of stuff you are doing on your own PC, as well as web-based stuff.

I think most people have a (perhaps faulty) idea that there is a clear division between what their PC does and what their PC tells the internet what it is doing. They might not be surprised if you told them their PC is probably sending a lot more data than they think to the internet. But if you told them their web browser was also a keylogger, that would definitely get their attention.

charlieanzman · 1 year ago

Phil - No ... I definitely don't recommend messing with the registry (except for ultra-geeks). Here's the scoop ... Almost any toolbar (Yes, including Stumble) will track, to some extent and, of course, tracking cookies will too. The better (safer??) clean up utilities such as CCleaner and Glary Utilities not only dump your temp files, cache and cookies but you can also look at and, if necessary, fix your registry as well. If I want a toolbar, I load it. Glary shows 9 'parasites' (essentially the Live toolbar). Now, to totally confuse the issue, I do like IE 8 Beta 2 so far (a lot). Comparing Chrome, IE6,7,8 Beta, Flock, Firefox 3.0 and 3.1 alpha ... clear winner for me overall right now is Firefox 3.01 on XP and Vista. Hope this helps?!

Phil Glockner · 1 year ago

That definitely makes sense. I haven't tried Glary but I have used CCleaner in the past. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that IE8 is up to some 'old tricks' where it watches your activities and phones home -- IE has been doing that on and off since IE 4.

friarminor · 1 year ago

Internet privacy is a fallacy but people continue to tell themselves otherwise.

Best.
alain

AramZS · 1 year ago

There is also an (unconfirmed) rumor that when you install Chrome it installs an add-in in all your other browsers to pull history information etc... from those browsers in order to populate the bar. It is supposed to continue running so that Chrome does not only track and send to Google HQ all the URLs you type into Chrome, but every other browser you run while Chrome is installed.