Posted on 07/04/2014 8:49:51 AM PDT by George from New England
I went to search with a tracking number on a package with Google. I got ...
> Your search - LN376892116CN - did not match any documents.
< Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are spelled correctly. * Try different keywords. * Try more general keywords.
Then I had someone else do the same thing at another pc and they got ...
Track USPS package LN 376 892 116 CN tools.usps.com Brooksville, FL - From your preferences - Use precise location ...
The second party was logged in to Google, the first one was not.
Google is censoring or hiding results based on whether you sign in ... i.e. if they can track you or not, determines what you are ALLOWED to see on Google.
Anyone can try this and confirm the same. Please post results here.
Use Yahoo?
Worked fine for me and I’m not logged in to Google.
Use IXQ, “the world’s most private” No tracking, no recording your IP?ID.
Googlt is a spy agency!
using an entirely new Chromium browser
I still get tracking #
and short URL
no cookies or login
same with firefox
Konqueror shows no results, logged in on another account
QupZilla gets tracking, no login
Konqueror spoofing other user-agent headers gets:
Firefox 2: no results
IE 7: no results
Netscape 7: no results
Opera 9: no results
Safari 4: no reuslts
Android 1: no results
Chrome 1: no results
Chrome 5: TRACKING
If it’s a post office package, just use the usps web site. Same for fedex and ups. To heck with “goggle”.
I get identical results either way.
It could be that the shipper (USPS) has not entered information into their computer system.
I have had that happen with various shippers. Sometimes, the package is already delivered before any online info shows up.
I am not sure this is a ‘google’ problem.
Putting in LN376892116CN returns a search for the USPS for the package (not in system) and this F/R topic.
Came up fine searching google *not* logged in using IE 11.
Didn’t find it. None of the engines I tried did. Google is the only one. Evidently I am logged into google. Have no idea how.
Just go straight to the USPS site: https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction?qtc_tLabels1=LN376892116CN
I got the screen shown in post 5 whether I was signed in or not.
Well, IXQ searches Google and all the other search engines. But it does it as a third party, you’re never tracked or involved. But,,,, for tracking numbers, I go to IXQ, and start the tracking search from there. I hate Goggle, it’s a spy agency for the advertisers. Do what you wanna do. I avoid Google.
I was asked to comment here about paywalls, which is a separate subject from the nefarious practices of google searches, such as tracking, bubble filtering, and censorship.
Simply put, a paywall is a means by which media websites try to selectively deny access to some or all of their content to try and induce the unsuspecting in wasting their money in signing up for paid subscriptions. Quite frankly, there are so many lies available online for free, that I don’t feel the name to actually pay for additional ones.
However, occasionally I wish to read a paywalled article. Which is where paywall avoidance comes in handy.
Almost all paywalls allow access to a media site’s content if a URL to that content is clicked from a search engine’s result page for some search that leads to that site. In particular, results from the big three search engines, google, bing, and yahoo will almost always penetrate a paywall. If the media sites didn’t allow these deliberate chinks in their paywalls, then they would be so isolated from the cyber world that they may as well as just set up a single newspaper stand on Jupiter and call it good, i.e., no one would ever even know they exist in and they’d wither away on the vine in just a few months.
All you have to do to take advantage of search engine exceptions to a paywall is to copy and paste the headline of an article you’ve been denied access to into a search engine search bar/box and then read the now available article by clicking on the resulting URL provided in the search engine results.
If the article headline is already a URL (like at freerepublic) then ordinary clipboard cut and paste won’t work and you’d have to manually type the headline into the search engine box. However, with Firefox and derivatives like Pale Moon, you can right click on the offending URL and use “Bookmark this link” to expose the headline in an ordinary text box, which you can then copy into the clipboard and later past into the search engine. Once the plain text of the URL has been copied into the clipboard, you can then dismiss the “Bookmark this link”, since you never had any real intention in making a bookmark as all you really wanted was the ability to access the URL plain text in the first place.
Another trick paywalls use is to use a persistent cookie to keep count of the number of times you’ve accessed a particular media web site per month/week/day/whatever and then deny you access after you’ve exceeded whatever their limit is.
There are many ways to find and delete these paywall counter cookies, including setting the browser to simply nuke all cookies every time you exit the browser, though that’s the least convenient way to do it.
The most effective way to deal with paywall cookies is to prevent them from ever being baked in the first place. With FF/PM you can use Adblock Plus to do this by adding blocking rules for things like:
s.ppjol.net
and
s.ppjol.net/css
which is a 3rd party service used by lots of media sites.
(BTW, blocking all of ppjol.net and all of ppjol.com might work just fine too and might be even better, but I’ve not had to drill down this far yet.)
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