Five Ways To Keep Your Google Searches Private

[radio667]

from informationweek.com ............. Word that the government has been seeking search data from Google has struck fear into the hearts of Internet Explorer and Firefox users. Here are five simple steps to keep outsiders from uncovering private information about your Web browsing habits.


The recent news that the U.S. Justice Department has been seeking search data (http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/177101984) from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and America Online has struck fear into the hearts of Web surfers. Many users are concerned, not because they've done anything wrong, but because they wonder just how much personal information can be gleaned (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3618950.html) from their on-line searches.

While the government action is aimed at fighting (http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/01/27/ap2483418.html) child porn, some computer-security pundits (http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/383) and newspaper columnists (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/01/29/a1e_versteeg_0129.html) are raising concerns that even users who haven't gone anywhere near such toxic material could potentially have their searches traced. (http://www.normantranscript.com/commerce/local_story_029004348) Political debates aside, the question of browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser) privacy is at its heart a technical issue. Whether you're using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx) or Mozilla's Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/) there are at five simple steps you can take to keep Web busybodies from uncovering information on your search queries.


Delete your history.

This one's easy, and obvious. IE and Mozilla maintains histories of all URLs (http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=url) which are typed into their address bars.

Clearing out the history is simple. Just go into "Internet Options," located under the "Tools" menu in Internet Explorer. (Here's a more detailed explanation (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=157729) from Microsoft.) In Firefox, histories can be clearing by going to "Tools" > "Options" > "Privacy."

That's something Robert Petrick apparently didn't do. (http://www.techweb.com/wire/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174402850) During his North Carolina murder trial in November, prosecutors showed that his hard drive contained Google searches (http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173602701) for the words: "neck," "snap," "break," and "hold." Petrick was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife


Page 2: Getting Rid Of Those Temp Files (http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2G4ONMY2VV3OMQSNDBCCKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleID=178600222&pgno=2)

[elwood]

Whoah. Deleting your history, cookies, temp files, and all that will get rid of traces of what you've done on YOUR computer. The issue here is that Google logs searches, presumably indexed by IP address, which can eventually be connected to you. Google logging searches isn't a big issue because they use the data to optimize the performance of their search software, but the government was asking Google to hand over their logs. Getting rid of temp files and history on your computer doesn't do anything to get rid of Google's logs.

Also, deleting files won't necessarily prevent people from finding them on your computer. There are sophisticated data recovery techniques available to get the information back, so one of the best protections is to use strong encryption on everything, and to browse the internet through a proxy. You could also use something like Tor (http://tor.eff.org/) to browse the internet, which works to help make you anonymous.

[radio667]

Cool , Hellwood :D Thank You !!!

[cUnNiNg_StUnTs]

Here's another one you may not know.

BOOT to a BART PE Disk or some boot disk that will allow you access to your system partition. Open a command prompt and change directory to the drive.

type...

DEL /S index.dat

you can not do this if the resident copy of Windows is running because it protects these files. But personal information could be extracted from those DAT files too.

As always use at your own risk.

[radio667]

Another Cool Tip !!

Thnak You :D CS !!!!!!

[1_LoSt_TaLiBaN]

gg :tsk:

[demigod387]

i keep all my kiddie porn, bomb making templates, NOC lists, active taliban splinter cell mapquest indexs, neo-nazi anarchist survival guides and other toys in a folder labeled "tr@x" on my desktop. If i ever get raided w/ search warrents from teh Fbee-eye all i have to say is "sh111111t, ain't mine. That's TRAX's folder."

i got it ALL figured out ;)

[radio667]

LMAOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo :D DEMIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii !!!!!!!!!

[elwood]

I was just waiting for tali to come in here and say that the only way to be REALLY secure is to use linux. And if he did, he'd pretty much be right. There's always doubts about the security methods and encryption implementation in Windows. Major accusations about Windows putting in backdoors for the NSA, and secretly breaking any encryption schemes they implement so the NSA can crack them without trying. The only way to really know you're secure is to be able to know exactly what software you're using, and open source is really the only way to do that.

On an unrelated note, I think there's another anonymous internet project besides Tor, but I can't recall the name right now, and a lot of people avoid it due to kiddie porn trading accusations because of the anonymity afforded. Maybe I'm thinking of Tor, but I kind of doubt it, and I'm hoping someone else can remember.

[Kingster]

First off: Excellent point in your first post, El. I read the article, and the ONLY one of the things they talked about to keep my Google searches private that works is the anonymizer. The rest? It just cleans up my tracks on my PC. If need to clean up my PC to keep the info out of the hands of others... Well, I got bigger probs than Google logging my searches. If you are going to go to the effort of cleaning cookies and that stuff, then you better be overwriting empty space on your drive, continuously defragmenting, encrypting... Oh, hell with it. Just don't get on the Internet. It's easier.

Secondly... Cunning: You actually can delete that file without booting to BartPE. You just can't delete it for the currently logged in user. So log in as another user that has admin rights, and delete the other user's index.dat...

Or... You could just do this:cd %homedrive%%homepath%
rd /s/q cookies
rd /s/q locals~1\history
rd /s/q locals~1\tempor~1

[elwood]

The other anonymous internet project is Freenet (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/), but it appears that it works in pretty much the same way as Tor. Also, there's more information on their FAQ, but it looks like a decent project and seems like it has lots of users. Also it looks like it has more capabilities than Tor, in which you can publish anonymous content and not just read anonymously, but I'm not sure exactly what you can do.

[radio667]

You Rock , HellWood :D Thank You !!!

[n3m35i5]

I was just waiting for tali to come in here and say that the only way to be REALLY secure is to use linux. And if he did, he'd pretty much be right.

now, I'm not solid on my open source here, but from what I understand it would be very easy for the NSA to do one of their secret search warrants that they don't tell anyone about, put a back door in red hat or whatever, and let people dowload it. the NSA now has free run of these peopl's Linux's. as a matter of fact the hardest part would be getting the warrant itself, and there are many situations where a warrant isn't even needed.

and last I heard, google was refusing to let out info, so my travel plans to columbia, where I would be taking back "medicine with painkilling effects," are safe for the moment
:rockon: :rockon:

[elwood]

The thing with linux is that the source is still out there. I suppose the NSA could coerce Red Hat into putting a backdoor into its binary linux distributions, but you can always download the source and compile from there, if you're really paranoid. And you can always check the source to make sure there's nothing malicious in there. Its also going to be much harder to sneak malicious code into a linux distribution, because all code submitted is checked by the project maintainer before its actually added to the program.

As long as we're talking about paranoid, the NSA is the ultimate paranoid computer security group. Not only do they write their own software, they even make their own processors (there's a small chip fab plant at the NSA headquarters). This is only for the top-security systems, but for something like that, they don't trust anyone else, and when you buy closed source, you're essentially trusting that the company is working to protect you. With open source, there's still the trust there, but if you ARE paranoid, you can potentially go and check yourself, but thats a very large task, to say the least.

[radio667]

ANONYMITY COMPLETE GUIDE .......... Nowadays, everyone wants privacy on the web, because no matter where you go, someone could be watching you. Someone like your employer, someone trying to hack your system, companies gathering all your info to sell to yet other companies, or even the government, may be on your track while you peacefully surf the web. Thus, anonymity on the web means being able to use all of its services with no concern about someone snooping on your data.....(free)..... GO THERE! (http://www.governmentsecurity.org/articles/AnonymitycompleteGUIDE.php)

[cUnNiNg_StUnTs]

Thanks Radio. :)

[radio667]

You Welcome :D Bro !!!!!!!!