Posted on 02/21/2012 6:08:37 AM PST by rawhide
Google has secretly been bypassing your privacy settings in Internet Explorer, Microsoft claimed Monday afternoon.
The startling accusation came in a blog post Monday by Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Internet Explorer. On Friday, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the search and advertising giant was bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Safari browsers on iPhones and desktop computers.
“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” Hachamovitch wrote.
“We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies."
... Google responded to Microsoft's accusations with a statement saying that the Windows giant "omitted important information from its blog post," noting that Microsoft's “self-declaration” protocol under which Microsoft asks "websites to represent their privacy practices in machine-readable form" is impractical to comply with -- and stating that the policy is widely non-operational.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
A lawsuit will come of this sometime I am sure
Google is evil. I wonder how much in taxes this Obama-supporting corporation actually pays.
Ok, so what’s the current best alternative to Google?
When will people come to their senses and avoid Google and MS?
Which means they are also doing it with Firefox
But they’re buying Yahoo, and Bing has its own problems.
What we need is a true Conservative search engine.
Yep, unless you’ve installed an add-on to remove them.
My bet is that somehow someway Goggle and the Rat Party are using the stolen information to formulate strategy.
If Google’s best rationale is that “because Microsoft code is buggy, Google had the right to change that code’s operation to thwart Microsoft’s programmed security”, Google just screwed the pooch!
What an eight-figure pie for Apple and their “friends” over in Redmond to divide!
HF
Bing for search. Hotmail for email. I avoid Google like the plague.
Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/) and Duck-Duck-Go (http://duckduckgo.com/) also claim they don’t track your activity. I’d really love to see a study of search effectiveness with these, as well as Bing and Yahoo, compared with Google.
Meanwhile, Google complains back that it depends on what your definition of “evil” is.
Best advice, in Firefox.
Tools => Options => Privacy => Remove Individual Cookies => (remove any cookie subdirectory that begins with “Google”)
Do this every few days.
VERY IMPORTANT: Many top websites now use “flash cookies” that backup user data so it is not deleted when the browser deletes the normal cookie.
Users can delete Flash cookies by going to Adobe’s Flash Player settings manager website:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
(You actually make the changes to your Flash player on your computer through their website. The image you see is a functional control panel, not just a picture.)
I came across something interesting that tracks with this article (pun intended).
There is an opt out provision in gmail to remove the ads that are part of your webpage and are specifically ‘tailored’ to match your interests as shown by your searches. If you click on the ‘opt out’ button, you are taken to a page that tells you [in effect] “OK Buster, you can opt out of the ads tailored to your interests and maintain some privacy—but then we’ll just put a whole lot more ads of every kind on your webpage so you better let us guide you.”
What a Hobson’s choice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.