Google Alarm

Ok! And.. How we block those bugs?

@Haiku yo that totally needs to be implemented in version 2!! Than it’ll be like Add-block plus, Flash block or the NoScript Add-on. GOOGLE BLOCK

GOOD. I never realized how invasive Google was before, but this is a wake-up call.

Well, this is one thing.. but what about facebook alarm? People are giving it exact personal information and also leaking a LOT of information about people who aren’t even on it, which is much much more worrying..

wow, those alarm sounds are more annoying than Google tracking my every move.

Ghosteryis a Firefox plug-in that detects and blocks trackers. Not only the ones from Google, butt all trackers.

Site: http://www.ghostery.com/
Download page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609/

Excellent little tool. I’m a bit disturbed by its behavior on SRWare Iron (a somewhat -defanged version of Chrome), in that it sounds off on literally every page load. I’d love to see an add-on that randomizes or otherwise poisons the cookie data being sent to the mothership.

After the alerts. How do we make google stop this. If its analytics let them stick to analysis…

Guys, don’t you think you just copy cat the vast amounts of FUD out there in the main stream press about this alleged data monster Google? Also, YOUR WEBSITE DOES EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

You rightly say “All of this data CAN be used to monitor & track” – is it actually used that way? And if it is, why? What does “tracking” mean? Maybe a lot of really useful services and websites- including yours – actually depend on data to get better for users (ever heard of machine learning and statistical analysis?) Well, for that you need unique identifiers or cookies – you call them bugs – but they are not necessarily personal data.

OR WHY DOES YOUR OWN WEBSITE HAVE 15 COOKIES INCLUDING 5 GOOGLE ANALYTICS COOKIES, 3 FACEBOOK COOKIES, AND 4 TWITTER COOKIES???

You guys don’t even do what you preach…you are not prepared to go back to Internet stone age. Maybe you use all of these bugs because they are useful to you?

i have blocked Google Analytics and Adsence with Noscript and Adblock and still get the alerts. WTF?

FYI, I just took a loot at the network activity stat. 10GB data has been sent out since last time I turn on my computer.
You know, your phone number can be encoded using only 9 Bytes. Grab your calculator, compute 10GB = ??? * 9B? Well, the plugin have no capability to tell the difference between your phone number(real privacy) from your google app’s programmatic status(data you don’t give a shit). So all you hear is beep beep beep, which is translated into “This plugin is google hater”, “This plugin is google hater”…

The link to the no-noise version isn’t working…

when it will available for firefox 3.5.11?

just use yahoo, it’s searches are more acurate anyway

I don’t like the fact that the app stays in the corner and I can’t log in to my website cause its flashing right in the way of me logging in and won’t move anywhere and too big for me to push the login tab on my website. Hope this gets fixed. It’s amazing though what they are watching. In fact not only the email, web, but all your emails and chats too!

Heh. I use adblock/flashblock/scriptblock with ff, and I’ve gone to Adobe’s site to block LSOs… will another plugin make me safer? I’m beginning to doubt the knowledge of anyone who writes apps for the web…

I’ve got some news for ya…

WE’RE ALL FsCKED!

…sweet dreams ;)

(the only way to stay safe is to never use the internet – whoops too late!)

You and only you are the legal owner of the copy rights of your own body, your own life and your own private data. Google, supermarkets, insurence companies, banks and other big brothers are making illegal copies of your private data, putting it in a profile and sell it for money !!!!

Think about it, when was it the last time that other people were using your private data in your advantage ?

I found another similar tool which is more helpful and blocks all Google ads, so you don’t even see them ;-)

http://www.adblockplus.org

Highly recommended!
Rob

O.K, but, is anybody know how am I going to remove this alarm from my comp?

What good does it do to alarm. We need blocking or better yet, vaporize google altogether.

after alarm went on, i cant click links in the area of the alarm message :(

What I don’t like about this is that you are making a big deal about the tracking without telling people what it used for. Terming the tracking cookies as “tracking bugs” only creates fear and panic in people when there is really nothing to fear.

Websites use Google Analytics to better understand their visitors and figure out what kind of content and products to develop and feature. Google might be able to track exactly where you are going, but the websites using Google Analytics only get generalizations (example: 12% of visitors on the home page visit Category X next). This information is used by webmasters to highlight the most meaningful content and make it more accessible to their visitors.

Adsense is used to display relevant advertisements on people’s websites. If you are on a tech blog, the Adsense script scans your page and tries to display ads related to the content.

If you want to go back to the days of web rings, crappy unrelated ads all over the place, and not being able to find the content you want on your favorite websites, go ahead and continue to vilify Google. But while you’re at it, make sure to include all the other analytics packages like Omniture, HBX, ClickTracks, WebTrends, and CoreMetrics. You know, the ones that can be customized to actually follow your every move rather than provide generalizations.

Forget about the “http://” in the middle line. Obviously this site added on its own, cos’ I didn’t write it…

Thanks for this great innovation. I am shocked that Big Brother Google spies on EVERY WEB SITE i use. So, once the alarm goes off, how do we then prevent Google from their shenanigans? I use Ubuntu 8.4 and Google Chrome (Sometimes Opera). Can someone explain to me in simple terms? I am not a computer geek, just a simple person who does not like being spied on.
Thanks in advance

This site uses the analytics tracking bug.

All this bug does is tell site owner how they got to their website. The exact same thing can be accomplished through the web servers log, google just happens to provide a super easy way to do the same thing through a piece of javascript.

This is being blow way out of proportion. Blocking this bug provides nothing of value to your privacy.

Funny, I installed this plug in mostly out of curiosity. Less than 10% of the pages I visit picked up an alert. So either 1: Google is not picking up stats from as many pages as is being implied, or 2: I seem to have a habit of not surfing to stupid pages like blogs or a lot of e-commerce.

Yes, the alarm is picking up on non-private info that Google grabs, but for me it’s mostly curiosity. I just want to see what they are looking at. This tool, at least in it’s current version, is useless and does nothing but spread panic.

I think most people are missing the point. The point is that you should not be affraid to question why things are the way they are. If no one questions why then how will you know or find out if your rights have been violated.

The biggest problem as one post said is intelectual property rights. Say you have a good idea and you do a search in google. Your idea is now fair game for anyone with access to search entries. Is that OK??

Opera version please!

gyt

@William Lee – I double-checked the behavior of a virgin Chrome install versus a copy of Iron, and upon loading and surfing to a single website (which has no external references), Wireshark showed only traffic to the target web server when I used Iron. It showed a bunch of http requests to 80.67.74.151 when using Chrome. Also a couple http requests to 74.125.19.95 for whatever reason. Otherwise my only traffic while testing were some totally-reasonable DNS requests to where I’d expect them to go.

I’m not claiming that SRWare was truly diligent in cleaning up the Chrome browser, but a quick honesty check indicates they did something that smacks of improved privacy.

I like the idea of this application but by the reviews, it looks as though it is a beta version requiring lost of further innovation and refinement. I will wait six months to a year before adding. In the meantime, other application developers are seeing that there is a need for such an application. If the inventors of this App don’t get on the ball, they may see an opportunity vanish before their eyes.