General

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Clayton — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:05:06 GMT

@Logistic: Yep, I've had a person send me my last name in PM on a forum (needless to say, he was a real prick) and other near misses. You can still be anonymous but it takes a lot of work to be reasonably sure you are anonymous. If you're doing something Verboten (drugs, prostitution, etc.), then you better be taking military-grade precautions unless you like living in a prison for extended periods of time.

Clayton -

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

LogisticEarth — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:11:43 GMT

This is why I don't try to hide my identity online. I use my first name in all my logins to remind myself that I'm not anonymous.

Wise decision. I use the same screename almost wherever I go, no reason to try and hide my identity, because if there were a situation where it REALLY mattered if the person knew who I was or not, they'd find out regardless of any attempts at obfustication. The internet hasn't been anonymous for some time now.

In my younger and more reckless years I posted on a large forum asking for some advice about whether or not to break up with my now-ex-girlfriend. I came off as a bit of an arrogant prick, and voiced some concerns that I hadn't mentioned to her. Some internet detective was able to figure out who I was on Myspace, found out who my girlfriend was, and sent her a link to the thread.

Needless to say the question of whether or not I was going to break up with her resolved itself before I had a chance to make a decision! It certainly wasn't a clean break though and she got hurt more than was nessecary, I still regret it today. Since then, I dropped all assumptions that what I do online is somehow secret from my "real" life.

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Clayton — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:43:23 GMT

I use Bing nowadays. I only go back to Google if Bing is giving me crap results. Google is evil in my book.

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

John James — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:05:24 GMT

Or you could use www.goodsearch.com and have money go to the LvMI.

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

boniek — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:38:40 GMT

I have mixed results so try it yourself and see if you like it. Can't say that I don't use Google though ;)

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Clayton — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:43:20 GMT

@Marko: Note that you can use Tor to search Google from virtually any location you want. I've used OperaTor and it's fairly straightforward to use.

Clayton -

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Marko — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:32:16 GMT

https://duckduckgo.com - alternative search engine which does not track you.

Cool. I hate it how google throws you search results based on your location (which is impossible to switch off btw). Who the hell wants to read some shitty site in a local language anyway?

But how good of a search engine is this Duck thing?

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Clayton — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:15:49 GMT

@John James: Well, I'm pretty up-front about my "conspiratorial" bent. I don't think the government takes much interest in my affairs because I'm inconsequential and I'm not trying to do anything that is Verboten but that's the only reason. I have no idea how common-place government surveillance actually is but that doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me is what they are (technologically) capable of. There are reasons why this is an important consideration for me.

Clayton -

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

John James — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:03:37 GMT

Clayton:
No, you missed my point completely. You never click on links posted in forum posts? I said I could post a link on the forum to some website I put up whose sole point is for you to access it so I can get your IP address.

Ah, yeah I was hoping you didn't mean what I said, but the way you described it made almost no sense.

Anyway, I don't understand what you're all worked up about. Feel free to surf the web in your own way, don't let me cramp your style.

Not so much "worked up" as I am just starting to see pattern in your posts. You bring up things and talk about them, like I said, as a nightly news caster would...are more precisely, like a layperson would after viewing a nightly newscast segment. Like here with the "all cell phones have had GPS since 2005, tell me that's not creepy" thing. A lot of embellishment and touting worst possible (and not even probable) scenarios as if they were commonplace...like you're trying to generate ratings or something.

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

boniek — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:27:41 GMT

Daniel Muffinburg:

boniek:

"What if I do want Google to decide what to filter?"

What about it? I don't care.

Then why did you create this thread?

For people that do not want google to decide what to filter obviously and to raise awarness about effects of personalization that may not be always desired and easily spotted.

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Clayton — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:09:25 GMT

"1b) you registering and hosting a fake domain, with a bunch of content, and just hoping I show up and don't realize I'm not even on the same forum I usually log in to...even though I for some reason need to "recreate" my account."

No, you missed my point completely. You never click on links posted in forum posts? I said I could post a link on the forum to some website I put up whose sole point is for you to access it so I can get your IP address.

Anyway, I don't understand what you're all worked up about. Feel free to surf the web in your own way, don't let me cramp your style. I'm not really worried about script kiddies but I am a little worried about how my employer or some random IP owner or the government might use information about me that they can obtain from the Internet in fairly basic ways against me. Hence, I keep myself aware of the fact that I'm not very anonymous unless I'm taking measure to make sure I am.

Clayton -

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

John James — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:48:40 GMT

Clayton:
*shrug - I always assume worst-case performance and base my actions on that.

My point is you spent the majority of that post listing off types of personal information that "could be easily discovered"...item after item after item...like you were conducting a special report for some nightly news show with the latest danger that's going to get your kids abducted and you murdered in your sleep.

But everything you listed is predicated on

1a) you being able to hack the forum I'm posting in to view my IP

1b) you registering and hosting a fake domain, with a bunch of content, and just hoping I show up and don't realize I'm not even on the same forum I usually log in to...even though I for some reason need to "recreate" my account.

2) Once you get the IP address you're assuming a free IP locator site will give you a correct location. (None of the ones I tried with my own IP got it right). How you intend to confirm the location you have gotten is correct, I have no idea.

3) Supposing you have a general location (say, a county...and of course this is assuming it's even in the United States) your next plan is to simply Google the user name, and hope that I've used the same one in other forums...

4) Supposing I have used the same name and you found activity in other forums, you're hoping that I've simply divulged basically all the personal info you listed. If I haven't, or if you can't find any other forums I've happened to use the same handle for (provided you can somehow confirm it's not someone else who happened to use the same generic username), I have no idea how you plan to proceed to get all this info you speak of.

5) Your final web tactic is to type my IP into Google and hope something comes up. (nothing does).

6) And then you finally move to a private eye...which of course is predicated on the idea that you have somehow gotten some kind of personally identifiable information...

Call me naive, but you haven't really given me much worry. I'm not saying there aren't idiots who post their name, phone number and pictures of themselves in front of their house with their address viewable in the background...I'm just saying it's a lot easier to just make a list of types of personal info and claim "look at all the stuff I could find out about you"...right after you basically said I would have to first publicize it where ever you happened to look.

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

DanielMuff — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:47:20 GMT

boniek:

"What if I do want Google to decide what to filter?"

What about it? I don't care.

Then why did you create this thread?

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

boniek — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:42:34 GMT

"What if I do want Google to decide what to filter?"

What about it? I don't care.

"If you aren't signed in, and you delete your cookies, Google can't "track" you either, right?"

There are several things you can do to limit the data that is sent to google or for any other advertising network for that matter. Use ghostery and adblock addons for firefox (both are extremely easy to use and selfupdate their blocklist), use alternative mail and search providers and if you still want or need to use google - explore google dashboard to disable some featues like web history (I don't know whether it really disables anything though - there may be data retention laws in some countries that force google to store it and if laws are ambiguous then they may store it anyway just to be on the safe side).

Re: Web search and content personalization - seen and unseen effects

Clayton — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:30:53 GMT

*shrug - I always assume worst-case performance and base my actions on that. Nothing I described is beyond the reach of a script-kiddie - you can temporarily park in a web-domain for free through some web hosts and anyone can use Google. My first name happens to be a little more unique and so a person could use my IP address and my first name to get a very small list of individuals. Combine that with my line of work and you've narrowed me down to a very small list indeed.

But if I was trying to hide, I wouldn't be accessing the internet in this manner.

Clayton -