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Search Engines

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Nomad
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« on: August 10, 2009, 09:15:12 am »


Alternative search engines for our privacy (one would hope)


http://www.alltheweb.com/ Should come up with sites that Google and co would perhaps rather we didn't see.

http://www.scroogle.org Claim to use Google search anonymously and without keeping records or sending your IP address.



http://www.google-watch.org

187-page study from Graz University, Austria

September 30, 2007

Prof. Hermann Maurer, editor and co-author

    Google distorts reality, Austrian study says

    Vienna, Dec 5, 2007 — Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, is on several fronts a danger that has to be stopped, a study released by Austria's Graz University claims.

    A research team led by Prof. Hermann Maurer, chairman of Graz University's Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media, argues that Google is turning into a new version of George Orwell's "Big Brother" - creating unacceptable monopolies in many areas of the worldwide web.

    According to his research, around 61 billion Internet searches are conducted each month. In the US, on average 57 percent of searches are conducted with Google, and up to 95 percent of Internet users use Google at least sometimes.

    It is dangerous enough that single entity such as Google is dominant as a search engine, Maurer and his co-writers say, but the fact that Google is operating many other services and is probably colluding with still further players was "unacceptable".

    "Google is massively invading privacy," the study said with the company knowing more than any other organization about individuals and companies, but not bound by national data protection laws. Google was amassing data by using data mining tools in its applications like Google Earth or Gmail in connection with being its search engine function.

    Thus, the search engine could potentially turn into the world's largest detective agency, the Austrian researchers warned, using the data it was collecting from its users via its applications. Even if Google did not use that potential now, it might have to do so in the future in the interest of its shareholders.

    The study argues that Google is influencing economies in the way advertisements and documents are ranked. "The more a company pays, the more often will the ad be visible." The study believes influence may be increased by also ranking results from queries, and that Google could, for business reasons, in the future rank paying customers higher in search results.

    Moreover, Maurer was worried that Google could use its "almost universal" knowledge of what was happening in the world to play global stock markets to its advantage.

    The danger of a distorted "googling" reality loomed ever closer, the report said. "Google has become the main interface of our reality," the study authors said.

    Most material written today was in some way based on Google and Wikipedia - and if those did not reflect reality, a distortion was possible, the researchers said, recalling biased contributions frequently placed on Wikipedia.

    Furthermore, there is some indication of cooperation between Google and Wikipedia. Sample statistics showed that random selected Wiki entries consistently ranked higher on Google than on other search engines, the Graz team said.

    Maurer also criticized journalists who increasingly started researching their stories by googling them, as well as students copying significant amounts of their work from the Internet.

    "Google's open aim is to know everything there is to know on Earth," the researchers concluded. "It cannot be tolerated that a private company has that much power: it can extort, control, and dominate the world at will."

    Stopping the insidious aspects of Google was however not possible by a head-on strategy, as the company was too powerful, the Austrian researchers warn. Rather, they say, the "Google effect" can be minimized by the introduction of special-purpose search engines that are better in their areas of application than the larger company is.

    — IANS



1.   Google's immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2.   Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3.   Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4.   Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5.   Google hires spooks:
Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6.   Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7.   Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8.   Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.

9.   Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

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I started out with nothing & still got most of it left.

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reverendhempman
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« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2009, 07:30:36 pm »

 Grin great links! I already use Scroogle, and will add all theweb.com too! Grin
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cally
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« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2009, 09:29:50 am »

Hushmail are supposed to be good.At least they pretend to keep e-mails private.

http://www.hushmail.com/
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dreamkatcher
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« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2009, 11:06:07 am »

I use sorch.com
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