Internet Privacy concerns

[Gotwind Ben]

Just watched an excellent documentary on the BBC
It relates to Internet Privacy - it's not what we think, for me anyway..

Google provides it's services for free, which is superb, however we actually provide the fodder to help it work as well as it does.

Our Keywords provide the massive computers to accumulate and sell advertising, 'Adwords' - focused advertising to the specific viewer.

Personally i know this, and ignore any Google sponsered ads - I will always look at the first organically ranked listings for a product or service.

It is a concern - maybe switch of the cookie setting - I'm not sure if that works?

Lots of sites won't let you access them with your cookies turned off. You also loose passwords and previous searches. Depending upon which browser your using.

You can go through a proxy if you don't want google peeking over your shoulder. Here's one called Schroogle.

http://scroogle.org/
http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

I can't remember what it's called (I'll edit this if I find it) but Mozilla Firefox has a downloadable application for blocking adverts,

I wouldn't have thought it would stop the search engines from recording your searches (they wouldn't be free if everyone did that)

A proxy looks like a good solution

Peter

I use these adblock programs

Adblock Plus for Firefox
Adblock for Google chrome
AdBlocker for Mac Safari
Along with flash blockers