Interesting talk (by progressive no less ;)) about how personalization of content and search results affect informations we receive.
https://duckduckgo.com - alternative search engine which does not track you.
What if I do want Google to decide what to filter?
If you aren’t signed in, and you delete your cookies, Google can’t “track” you either, right?
They can and do still track you by IP address and I believe they connect all these data-points into nodes so that every IP you use, every account you use and every browser you use gets connected to all the others.
Tor is one way to get around this. Another is to use a web-proxy. I believe there are non-Tor IP-hiding/masking proxies you can use which are invisible to the user (unlike web proxies which require you to go to the web-proxy site). It’s actually pretty tough to hide nowadays… it’s not like the old dial-up days anymore. However, with determination and the know-how, you can still remain fairly anonymous.
Edited to add: 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. Forget the government, a script kiddie could fairly easily figure out my physical location and home address in no time. More important than anonymity is liability. If you use BitTorrent, can the RIAA sue you? Well, the best way to defend against that is not to allow them to have any evidence that you (you personally) participated in file downloads. My IP address? Well, that’s dynamic and spoofable (MAC address is a different story, this is why you’re best off using a virtual machine). My login name? Hackable/spoofable. What constitutes proof/evidence is my hard drive. Hence, you might consider storing pirated materials in encrypted form. TrueCrypt is the way to go (some have suggested that TrueCrypt is back-doored but I doubt this and, even if it is, no way would they waste the back door prosecuting someone for illegal movie or music downloads).
Clayton -
Does that mean you could tell me who and where I am?
If I was a forum moderator (or could hack the forum and gain access to a moderator account, which is probably easier than you think), I could probably tell you what city you are in just using one of these sites. Of course, spoofing is always easier than hacking, so I could just put up a throw-away web domain such as www.thoughtsonmises.com, copy a bunch of random stuff from mises.org and put a link on the forum and ask people what they think. Bada bing, bada boom, I have your IP address and plug it into above-mentioned IP-locator.
You have chosen a good forum handle since it’s basically impossible to google… if you had something like “Ultm8Termn8tor”, I could just google that and search your activities across many sites. From this, I could possibly glean personal details about you such as whether you are single or married, what your real life first name is (sometimes people give it out in messages to forum friends even if they don’t use it in their forum handle), what country, state, city you are in or, just as useful, which you are not in. I might discover who you work for - or, almost as useful, what line of work you are in. I can google your IP address and any websites that happen to publish it - for whatever reason (this does happen) - might turn up.
Once I have any kind of solid, personally identifiable information, I can pay a private investigator a modest fee to fill in the details. He will be able to pull up home address, home phone, possibly cell phone, possibly place of employment, and so on.
Clayton -
So basically what you’re saying is that it takes more skill that just being a script kiddie, and a lot more stupidity than anything I’ve displayed to actually do what you were talking about.
*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 -
“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).
Then why did you create this thread?
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
or
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.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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Your final web tactic is to type my IP into Google and hope something comes up. (nothing does).
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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.
“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 -
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.
Ah, yeah I was hoping you didn’t mean what I said, but the way you described it made almost no sense.
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.
@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 -
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?
@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 -
I have mixed results so try it yourself and see if you like it. Can’t say that I don’t use Google though 
Or you could use www.goodsearch.com and have money go to the LvMI.
I use Bing nowadays. I only go back to Google if Bing is giving me crap results. Google is evil in my book.