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69 Comments
- 9teen7ty9, on 10/12/2007, -4/+55Just more crap in the tubes
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+38What is the point of this? 3 million searches for "lksjdlkj2344390sdf" and 1 search for "naked boys" are still tied to your IP.
- DiggLurker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+32And every 3rd search is "I am not Stephen Colbert"
- Create, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30http://www.blackboxsearch.com/
- UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -1/+29AOL did.
- pchi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27BB has a really good analysis of why this extension doesn't create enough noise or obfuscation to protect your searches from data-mining or surveillance.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/21/trackmenot_firefox_e.html - invader, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25easy.. keep your IP away from naked boys, sick-o!
/sarcasm - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22Hey, who told you about my searches!
- ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18Hopefully stuff like this is just a drop in the bucket, but I cringe a little when I think of things like this getting wide spread, generating useless traffic all the time.
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17that might be fixed in TrackMeNot 2.0
in related news.. spam drops to 60% of total web traffic, down from 80%, because 20% of web traffic is now generated by this new-fangled extension - Uruviel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Tor [ http://tor.eff.org/ ] anyone?
Seems like a more secure and permanent solution to the problem then just hitting the database with random text strings. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15..but don't worry, they said sorry afterwards.
- LucasVB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Sounds like a very lame attempt at privacy to me. Random search queries won't generate noise because they won't disrupt the relevance of any other genuine searches that you might keep private.
Generating "semantical noise" is not a trivial task such as picking two or three words from a predefined dictionary. The dirty and specific stuff would still stand out because they wouldn't fall in the same context as the rest, but would easily fit in together. It's like mixing puzzle pieces of two different puzzles together.
Also, this will only flood search engines with millions of useless queries, and will waste a whole lot of bandwidth. - mikeroySoft, on 10/19/2009, -0/+10I prefer to wrap myself in the arms of Big Brother, you insensitive clod!
Profiling just means they will be able to help us better, giving us what we REALLY need!
/sarcasm - EastDakota, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Here's a similar idea but: 1) doesn't involve installing software, and 2) builds queries from a much more robust vocabulary including Google's Zeigeist, the released AOL search data, and a grammar that understands nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc....
http://www.lostinthecrowd.org/
Searches run through Tor and other proxy networks to keep them hard to recognize as being randomly generated. - RGCook, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10It seems to me that a tool like this would impose tremendous parasitic overhead on search engines thereby reducing their efficiency and performance. I still don't get the concern. If you are using a service for free, what do you expect. WTF, they can tell what channel you watch on TV and I understand that the capability to monitor your driving habits and TiVO usage is built in.
Face it folks, if you want to be private, forget tech and go hermit in the mountains. You can't hide. So stay on the up and up. - ccheath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8here's a quote from the BB update
"Also, the search entries are limited to two-word terms, which makes the extension's effects even more redundant. The most revealing and sensitive search entries revealed by the AOL fiasco were things like "how to tell if ur gay and want to sexx0r ur best friend", entries that will be painfully visible, even among throngs of machine-generated two-word entries." - malorkus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I don't think Customize Google is as great at protecting privacy as many people think it is. It may anonymize your google cookie, but it definitely doesn't mask your IP address, which Google can use just as easily to build a profile. And if you use Gmail, Google can always tie your current IP address and your Gmail address together.
- Universal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7And for those on the go, there's TorPark. Or you can just use it while you're not on the go, too.
- Barrier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Well they only need to check if you clicked on any of the returned links to filter out the crap.
- Eccohawk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4so unless trackmenot includes all the illegal ideas and acts as part of that 3 million searches, it's not much of a useful thing. to put it more bluntly, if you wanted to search for 'naked boys' as stated above, and this extension pumps out all sorts of twisted f'ed up searches similar to that type of thing, -then- you'd have grounds on which to protect yourself if every someone went after you for whatever reason....'TrackMeNot looked it up, not me. I can't be responsible for what it's searching for. My internet searches prove nothing and can't even be proven to be of my own doing.' Good concept, needs some work though before it's truly viable.
- meatstack, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7That, my friend, is exactly why I'm drawn to this.
If the Search companies do not value my privacy, then I do not value their bandwidth. Make the promise not to reveal my searches to the government (talking to you Yahoo, MSN) or to the web on a whim (that one is for you AOL) and I won't waste your bandwidth. - plasmatic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5They can't tell the difference. The extension acts just like a user and there is no possible way to tell them apart.
- ccheath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ding ding ding... we have a winner
- ccheath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3invader... you may be right, but who knows when that will be since it's still in v0.2.6alpha
- drowelf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Stop installing useless firefox extensions! This one does NOTHING to protect you, not even slightly (again, see the BB article above for a limited explanation of why). Use Tor and Privoxy if you want some annonymity on the web. Please run a Tor server if you have the means!! The more servers, the faster Tor will be.
- Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3not worth installing aextension that just does one thing...I'll continue to use customize google extension that packs alot of option in to a small size as well as keep my searches on google private.
http://www.customizegoogle.com/ - keesj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You clearly don't know how PageRank works.. check the frontpage, there's a story about it.
- Genma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2hide our searches by flooding the net with garbage searches? worst idea ever. gtfo my tubes please.
- Eccohawk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You almost need to have the system create search 'personalities' for it to be truly worth it. Like each day or week or whatever, it creates a new set of master parameters from which to pull from, and pulls searches related to that template for that time period.
Reason being that real people don't search randomly. They often perform many searches for similar topics, things that interest them, variations on the same search to get better results, etc. Data miners would only need see what types of searches came up most in order to get a sense of who they're getting data from.
By creating a way to generate search personas, you could eliminate the way they figure out who you are. You'll have 20 or 30 searches dealing with sailing, for example, when you've never set foot on a boat. That's the way to -really- screw up the results and make their work pointless. - gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Tor is great, but it's really not a good solution for everyday web browsing for the majority of the public. Last time I used it, Tor significantly cut down on my browsing speeds.
- NikhilPK, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3http://scroogle.org
- virtualmachine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Colbert in action!
Everyone remember that on his "Internet Security Tips?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbyJbrhzDk4 - Mambo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So, you just generate a lot of dity stuff and then blame it on the program. Distribute it as spyware, and everyone that has a dirty little secret can just blame it on that new bug that is floating around.
- nemik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hey guys, I just created a Firefox Greasemonkey script that anonymous searches on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
It goes through the http://www.blackboxsearch.com service that Create posted above in the comments (thanks a lot). It lets all your search engine pages look the same, but redirects the actual searches through a completely anonymous proxy.
My greasemonkey script is here: http://blog.nemik.net/2006/08/21/dont-leave-traces/
Let me know what you think! - MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No, it doesn't. A firewall will protect you from certain things, but only a proxy can shield your IP address from the servers you connect to.
- FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1
Except of course that the bb quote is wrong. I'm sitting here watching 4,5 or even 8 word searches being done
'Samuel beckett flushing deprecated'
'kit twink weapons of mass destruction Charlie Parker'
are just two of them... - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It would be great if we could use our own dictionaries. I'd include words shoe, bomb, bush,sucks,al queda is good, jesus loves osama.
Even nicer would for it to be aware of English grammar and use a dictionary of nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc to create random sentences. 'osama ate the shoe bomb of bush', 'i love terrorists and hate bush' etc. Opencyc can do this. - testcase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This extension is a very bad idea! I decided to test this and installed it. I kept an eye on what it was submitting as queries. Most of it was innocuous nonsense, but then to my horror I saw;
"bombs pipe"
I thought, "Holy crap! What is this sh*t?!" Naturally I pulled the plug immediately.
This thing is sending out very bad queries which nobody in their right mind would want associated with their net presence, no matter how innocently.
I would recommend that everyone who has installed this *uninstall it* ASAP as a bad idea. - kahrn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think for it to work the dictionary file needs to be much larger, and the search terms more extreme, and the real query random each time. As for the theory of fighting back using this method, I don't know. As long as the query is random each time then I dont see how the search engine could pick the actual query.. if the results were found, data profiling it would be very hard as long as it had a very big dictionary list and didn't use the same terms on each search.. although whats to stop the engine from restricting you?
One way or another, we will fight! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thanks! Works quite well.
- CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Er... I'm happy with CustomizeGoogle thanks.
- bs0l, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1actually its 3 million searches for "newsgroups flytrap" and "live huffing"
- inactive, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1
http://www.24timepass.com/technologies-stuff/futur ...
Future of internet : Firefox perspective | Firefox New version
http://www.24timepass.com/technologies-stuff/futur ... - MikeZila, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1tinfoil hat v0.0.01
- NiteTrip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Worst extension ever...
- pwun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1A great way to say Hello to Echelon too.
I'm digging this post cause I had this idea while eating lunch today (coincident). I hope future version it should allows you to do your own scripting. Or better yet, implement basic AI.. there are AI Chatbots out there that can be used for this.
"AI Noise" - Slink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0so what happens if you someone figures out a way to hack you and exploit trackmenot and starts pumping out searches for "kiddie porn", "underage donkeys" and "christina aguilera" from your PC?
Think I'd rather be in control of what was being searched for. - pwun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1it cutted me right there, didn't have a chance to finish that last sentence.
"AI Noise" that should be a new concept. Implement a sophisticated AI that talks to search engines. Create pause (to create the illusion that the bot is reading what it searches...) Creat characters/personalities. If Google can do it, so can we. It's a BOT WAR. - krimkrim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://noprofile.no-ip-org
NoProfile is a lightweight program designed to prevent search engines from making personal profiles based on the words that you search for.
It does so by searching for random but coherent phrases on the search engine at random intervals. -
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