Alternatives for google

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gaoesa
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Alternatives for google

Post by gaoesa »

As you probaby have read from the news papers, google has dediced to combine all it's collected information from web users in order to create detailed profiles of people. This information is then sold to all interested parties.

Google is doing this despite the fact that EU has asked it to withhold with this renewal until the legality for it has been checked.

So, for people worried, I thought to post some alternatives for the search engine.

www.altavista.com - owned by Yahoo
www.bing.com - owned by Microsoft (if I'm not mistaken)

For people using Android phones the situation is not as easy, unfortunately.

Here is a link to a Finnish MicroPC article on the matter
http://www.mikropc.net/kaikki_uutiset/g ... sa/a785037
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Penderi
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by Penderi »

Hmm.. Is there any good alternatives for Gmail?
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TheSilencerPL
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by TheSilencerPL »

you can also delete and pause the history collection from your google accounts (your profiles) so it is not gathered. If you use firefox, you can install addon blocking Google Analytics, so the google cookies are not stored.
To remove the history: https://www.google.com/history/ press: Remove all Web History.
This will remove all gathered history and stop the gathering.
Repeat this for each google account you have.


For youtube this is done a little bit differently. Login to your YT account and open movie manager (or so, I don't remember the exact name) go to history and press: "Clear viewing history" and then "pause viewing history". Go to "search history and repeat above actions.
Repeat it for each YT account you have.
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gaoesa
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by gaoesa »

However, one thing to remember about the gathered history is that it will only stop google from linking it to your account. It will not stop the gathering in general and/or combining the information from different sources.

The cookie thing looks interesting. However, google is not only limited to cookies when it does the tracking. There is lot of information that you drop all around which can be combined to generate guesses of the user. Even more fearfull scenario is if google will combine with other tracking sites and at that way it can still link reliably all the information.

Only way to keep anonymity is to use Tor. Visit https://www.torproject.org/ to see more.
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TheSilencerPL
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by TheSilencerPL »

I wrote it a little bit wrong, the FF add on blocks Google Analytics java script, it causes it to stop to communicate to Google Analytics.

Here is the add-on download page: http://www.google.com/tools/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en
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gaoesa
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by gaoesa »

Isn't that Add-on also made by google?
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by TheSilencerPL »

Might be, that's why it can instruct that script to not communicate with GA.
But, I've found something better. Check this out: http://www.ghostery.com/download
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gaoesa
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by gaoesa »

Nice finding.

Another interesting one is Collusion Add-on for at least firefox. It is still on beta stage but nevertheless, shows a nice graph of all the sites that are tracking me when I'm surfing around websites.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... collusion/
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Re: Alternatives for google

Post by TheSilencerPL »

Yes, Collusion is also very nice, I've been using it for some time already :)
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