Comments on: Google can and should do better.

By: Standard Mischief » Google doesn’t like my zeroed out cookie

Standard Mischief » Google doesn’t like my zeroed out cookie — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:30:34 +0000

[...] ways back. I wrote a little HowTo on zeroing out and then protecting the perpetual cookie that Google likes to give you. The idea behind using the same cookie as myself, iMilly, and a bunch [...]

By: _Jon

_Jon — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:49:31 +0000

Or just, ya know, not use Google….

By: Standard Mischief » Blog Archive » TrackMeNot, a solution for search terms privacy issues?

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:29:16 +0000

[...] Just a few days ago I told you about how AOL accidentally released a bunch of users Internet search term records, which was exactly why I had suggested way back in January that everyone zero out their Google Cookie. [...]

By: Standard Mischief » Blog Archive » AOL releases their customer’s raw search data.

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:43:30 +0000

[...] Maybe I’m missing something major, but this seems exactly like the case where the Department of Justice asked Google for a bunch of search data in their attempt to resurrect a law that was struck down, except this time it was AOL, not Google, and the data was released world wide instead of being sent to the DOJ. [...]

By: Standard Mischief

Standard Mischief — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:26:13 +0000

Doug says- Why not just use CustomizeGoogle extension (customizegoogle.com) and turn on the “Anonymize the Google cookie UID” option in the privacy tab?

Good suggestion. I didn’t suggest it mostly because I haven’t seen it yet. In fact, if you follow the link, you will see that CustomizeGoogle was released on the same day I wrote this post.

Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to try it out.

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 03:09:03 +0000

Why not just use CustomizeGoogle extension (customizegoogle.com) and turn on the “Anonymize the Google cookie UID” option in the privacy tab? Of course, I use personalized search with google, so they know everything I do anyway (except when I log out to search for nsfw items).

By: Standard Mischief

Standard Mischief — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:59:58 +0000

Yea, that’s not very clear. This technical writing stuff is harder than it appears. The cookie will travel with you if it?s on the hard drive of your laptop, and you take it to a friend’s house or to a coffee house, and either jack in there, or use Wi-Fi.

It will also travel with you if you have a copy of Portable Firefox (USB Drive-Friendly) and take it with you, like I do to avoid using IE on someone else’s computer.

So I reworded it. I also added a bit about surfing from a static IP and about proxies.

Thanks for the feedback.

By: cube

cube — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 23:05:31 +0000

” Even if you access Google at a coffeehouse or a friends house.”

Would that be with a labtop or a regualr desktop? Cookies are computer sepcific. If i use two computers one for work and one for home they would have two different numbers, not the same one.

I dont see how they could track you if you used your friends computer at your friends house, it would just use the tracking number he already has, or create a new one for you.

By: SayUncle » More on Google

SayUncle » More on Google — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:01:04 +0000

[...] Standard Mischief has more on Google v. .gov. He notes: Google gives you a cookie with a unique number in it that?s sorta like your Socialist Insecurity number except it?s a lot easer to get, and get rid of. That cookie is sent back to Google every time you interact with Google. Even if your ISP provider changes your IP address. Even if you access Google at a coffeehouse or a friends house. And because Google does not have a ?data retention policy?, all of that data presumably gets warehoused, forever, just in case they ever find it useful. [...]

By: Standard Mischief

Standard Mischief — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 07:05:25 +0000

Milly on her page, says her Bookmarket “should work for almost all browsers, and at least IE4+, Opera, AOL, Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox.”

However, what I am doing here is protecting just the cookies I want to keep (including the zeroed out google cookie) and disposing of the remander persistant cookies (I call it “upchucking”). For that you need the CookieCuller extention, and that only runs on Firefox. Sorry.