Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 21, 2009 by CyberNet.

In 2008, Google said there’s no such thing as complete privacy. You’re being tracked all over the web by their AdSense ads, by sites that use Google Analytics and – probably the most important – their search engine. But Google Search isn’t the only search engine that tracks your behavior. Concerned about your privacy? In this article, we’ll show you how you can get rid of click tracking in search engines.

The secret redirect

Google

Whenever you click a link in Google Search, your click is redirected through a secret URL. If the site you’re going to is http://www.cybernetnews.com/, Google will do a secret redirect through a URL that looks similar to http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.cybernetnews.com/. In some cases, you can reveal the secret redirect by right-clicking on a linked search result. If that doesn’t work, your last resort is an HTTP sniffer.

There are several Firefox add-ons that claim to get rid of Google Search’s click tracking. CustomizeGoogle is one of them. Among other tweaks, it promises to remove click tracking and disable Google Analytics cookies. If you just want the anti-tracking feature without the bells and whistles, there’s a Greasemonkey script you can download called Google Tracking B-Gone. To use Greasemonkey scripts, you need to install the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. Also, if you use an international version of Google such as google.co.uk, you have to change the script’s URL range from http://*.google.com/* to http://*.google.*/* to ensure that the script is allowed to operate on your local Google site.

Yahoo

Unlike Google’s redirect, the one Yahoo uses is always easy to find. Right-click on a link and look at your status bar to reveal an intimidating garglemesh of strange characters originating from rds.yahoo.com. You can get rid of that by installing this Greasemonkey script. However, my HTTP sniffer revealed that Yahoo does some additional click tracking from a URL that starts with http://search.yahoo.com/ra/click?. To disable this, add http://search.yahoo.com/ra/click?* as a filter to Adblock Plus.

Bing

Bing seems to have a very subtle click tracking mechanism. The only fishy thing Bing does is call some URL’s that start with http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/ whenever you click a search result. Again, Adblock Plus can help you deal with this if you add http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/* to its filter list. Turning off JavaScript on bing.com seems to help too.

Shutting off the HTTP referrer

Although the tips listed above can help you stop search engines from tracking your clicks, it does not keep websites from gathering information about your web search. This is done through the HTTP referrer. Any page on the web can retrieve information on how you stumbled upon it, i.e. which URL referred to their web page.

The referrer is also known to be used by site owners to retrieve information about the search engine you used and what your search query was. On rare occasions, some sites alter themselves if you found them through web search. For example, I’ve seen sites display “Welcome, Googler!”-esque messages and even sites that highlight your Google search terms on the page you landed on. Although this rather creepy practice is not widespread, it just shows how much a site really knows about you.

Fortunately, you can disable the sending of the HTTP referrer to the websites you visit. While it is possible to disable the HTTP referrer entirely in Firefox’s about:config, this can break certain functionality on some sites. There’s a Firefox add-on called RefControl that does away with this issue by allowing you to add exceptions for sites that need the referrer.

Other browsers

It is possible to use the Google Tracking B-Gone and Yahoo Click-Tracking Disabler scripts in other browsers. So if you’re really serious about extending your tinfoil hat protection to other browsers, you can check out these resources:

• Internet Explorer: Greasemonkey for IE
• Opera: How To: Greasemonkey in Opera
• Safari: GreaseKit
• Chrome: Greasemetal

To disable the HTTP referrer, follow these instructions:

• IE/Opera: How do I Disable Sending Referrers?
• Safari: Is there a way to disable header referrals in Safari?
• Chrome: currently really difficult

Since I’ve only tested this with Firefox, I cannot guarantee that the content from these resources is accurate.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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In a feat that outdoes even Dr. Evil’s vision of worldwide domination, the folks in Mountain View have reported a staggering one billion downloads of Google Earth. Over the years, the service has taken us around the world, giving us a peak into amazing and sometimes obscure places ranging from the bottom of the ocean to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s also evolved from its humble beginnings as a desktop app back in 2005 to include a mobile app and a plug-in, not to mention a 3D flight simulation used with Google Maps — all features that helped it reach the astronomical milestone. For that, we salute you Google Earth. Check out the celebratory video after the break.

Continue reading Google Earth hits one billion downloads, those with fear of flying still getting virtual kicks

Google Earth hits one billion downloads, those with fear of flying still getting virtual kicks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Official Google Blog, Google Earth  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on May 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

If you go and search for a video at Google Video today, you’ll notice a new addition in the mix of results.  Up until recently, Google Video and YouTube videos were the only ones to appear in the results. Not so anymore as MetaCafe has now been added in.

They’re not stopping there either – MetaCafe will not be the only video sharing website that will be included in the results.  At the Searchology event, Google’s Marissa Mayer said that “we have them all.” And eventually, they will include the results from many of the video sharing sites.

Not only will the text results be included, but they’ll also have thumbnails for the videos from five or six of the major video sharing services.Mayer was asked about the availability of video search and her response was, “if we can crawl it, you will be able to search it.”

What’s interesting is that when you do a search and a MetaCafe result is displayed, it’s linked back to MetaCafe, the thumbnail is from MetaCafe, but you can watch an inline preview of the movie and it’s played using the Google Video Player. Apparently Google downloads the video themselves because they’re hosting the file that is played in the video player.

This really changes the way people will search for videos. Instead of going to one site to search, they can do a comprehensive search (eventually) of all of the major video sites to get a larger set of results.

I’m wondering how MetaCafe feels about this right now, because as it stands there’s really no need for anybody to click through to their site when they can stay and watch the video inline right from Google Video. It would be different if just a preview was offered and in order to watch the full video, users would have to go to MetaCafe to watch it.

Keep your eye out because other video sharing sites will be added soon…

Source: ZDNet

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

Google is no stranger to security issues, that’s for sure. They’ve had their fair share to deal with, and it doesn’t appear that it’s getting any better. Each time it’s serious business and the fact of the matter is, security will always be something that Google will need to viscously deal with.

One of the more recent incidences involves Gmail experiencing some issues with XSS holes (Cross-site scripting).  This is dangerous for users because it can expose their Google account information and even allow hackers to hi-jack a Gmail session, not to mention the fact that Google uses a single sign-on method.This issue has since been fixed, but the problems didn’t stop here.

Another recent incidence involves Google Desktop and a zero-day vulnerability. It’s explained best by Robert Hansen who has previously taken in-depth looks at security flaws:

• User goes to Google and performs a search.
• Man in the middle detects the action and proceeds to inject his own content.
• The attacker injects a piece of JavaScript that creates an iframe to the target URL as well as makes the iframe follow the mouse. This is invisible to the user.
• He then frames another search query to correctly position the content inside the follow mouse script.
• As the evil search query loads, he injects a meta-refresh to reload the same page forcing Google Desktop to load. This could be any program already installed on the victim machine that is indexed by Google Desktop.
• User inadvertently clicks on evil Google Desktop query which actually runs the associated program.

While Google may tout “don’t be evil,” that doesn’t mean that there isn’t evil lurking amongst their services. Case in point, here are some of the Google security issues we’ve already discussed:

1. Google Exploit Found – Pretends to be Gmail Plus
2. Gmail Flaw can Give Anyone your Contact List
3. Another Google Security Flaw Found
4. Google Desktop Patched to Prevent Computer Takeover

As always, users beware! Hansen says in regards to the zero-day-vulnerability with Google Desktop, “This should drive home the point that deep integration between the desktop and the web is not a good idea, without tremendous thought put into the security model.”

For those using Google Desktop, his statement gives you something to think about.

Source: Slashdot (Thanks for the tip Cory!)
Image Source

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Right now I feel pretty bad for the YouTube team because of all the vulgar comments they’re receiving over the recent addition of video overlay ads. Most of the comments are irrelevant to helping YouTube improve the ad experience for the users, and if you decide to go look through the comments I’m sure you would see how immature some people can really be.

I’ve had a chance to interact with one of the video ads (pictured above) and I don’t understand why people despise them so much. The first time I saw one of the ads it was for The Simpsons Movie, and it really caught my attention. I was drawn into the ad, and even found myself compelled to watch it. It only takes up the lower 20% of the video, is heavily transparent, and it will disappear after a few seconds if you don’t click on it. Or there is always the "X" in the corner to manually close the ad.

Crazily enough the anti-ad outcry has been heard and there is a Firefox extension, called TubeStop, that will block YouTube ads. It does so by replacing the standard YouTube player with an "embedded" one…the same one you’ll find on other non-YouTube sites. This works because YouTube is currently not showing the ads on videos that are embedded on other sites.

So my real question is why would you want to block YouTube ads? I can only imagine how much money it costs to run YouTube because of the extreme bandwidth usage, but as of 1-year ago the associated costs were reported to be $1 million per month! Since that time their traffic has almost trippled, and I can’t imagine that the cost to run it has gotten any cheaper. Not only that but I’ve heard that a portion of the ad revenue is given to the authors of the video, and by leaving the ads you’re thereby supporting them.

Maybe I feel this way because we run our own site and rely on advertising for our income, but all I know is that you’ve got to support the sites you use the most. They’re not asking you to fork out money from your own pocket…all they’re trying to do is give the advertisers and viewers the best experience possible. I’d much prefer to see this type of video ads rather than the ones that are shown for the first 15-seconds of the video.

Source: Mashable

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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