bjoernvold.com

It is nothing new that Google spies on you to make a buck.
Now they have been caught by the Wall Street Journal in exploiting Safari Cookies. On the desktop market Safari has a 6 % market share. But in the mobile market the share is 50 %.
The practice was first discovered by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer.
Google intentionally circumvented the default privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser, using a backdoor to set cookies on browsers set to reject them. Safari defaults to block third party cookies! So it is official; Google does not give a dam about what you want and they ignore your explicit wish for privacy.
After being caught Google immediately stopped the practice.
Google and Facebook claim that it is perfectly OK since Safari does not follow a web standard, or something.

Makes me wonder what Google has not been caught for.
I have said it before and it is time to repeat it: Do not trust Facebook and Google! This is the behavior of crooks.

Apple is not caring to much about your privacy either so I don't even know if they mind......

I have changed my default search engine to http://duckduckgo.com. It is not as good as Google, but Google does not even understand the concept of privacy, even though they claim to take it seriously.
The privacy policy off duckduck.com is actually respecting you.

More here

And here

Yeah.... and MS and Apple does not?

That is a PR campaign about Google on some that we already know and pimping DuckDuckGo search.

Very transparent article.

Well I like the "You are interested in herpes" example If you'v got it Google knows it!

And you need a vaccination/pill to treat it; not cure it, treat it.

That is where the money is at

The plot thickens: It seems that scroogle scraper is down, a search engine much like google that respects your privacy. I ran a search at google for it ("scroogle scraper", without the quotes), because I couldn't remember the exact link for it, and there is talk from the search that it appears google has taken the domain down - http://www.scroogle.org/. When I hit it up, I found that it still is indeed down. The very interesting thing about that, is I had no idea that the search engine that respects your privacy, has anything to do with one that is opposite and contrary to it. So, I'm quite in "HHMMM" mode on that one. How 'bout them Apples (excuse the pun)?

The next thing that came to mind that I thought I might be able to use, would be Gigablast - http://www.gigablast.com/. It still has some maturing to do, IMO, but could suffice for now. It's boring right now, appears to be completely non-google-related (thank gods), but one never knows.

I remember when Google started it seems to have good intentions; the Open Source kids trying to knock down MS.

But I am on the impression that behind the Google mask; the Gov minions are behind.

I remember O'Bummer had a meeting with all the tech powerhouses in San Francisco (I think).
My take is that he gave the low down on how the web is going to be controlled.
Kind of the speech from the movie Network.

Kind of like this...
All the Computer Geeks have created a new world, untouchable, invisible, global, a join collective of ideas, communication and collaboration and the Gov will not have it.
If you control the web, you control the collective thinking.

So if you control Google, Facebook, MS (already controlled), Apple, Twitter, etc... you can control or influence the collective.
We already see all the trash that litters the web; go to AOL, Yahoo, Bing, MSNBC, etc and you will see all the crap media that you are getting Spam with.

MS is going down the tubes; my 1st clue is Uncle Billy.
He is now in the World Health BS, he is joining the Big Pharma cartel; simply put, that makes more money for his foundation than MS.

Yup, and did you get a load of Billy talking about "controlling the population with vaccines" in that one video? If not, go run a search for "bill gates depopulation" at youtube. I don't care how you cut that one, or what context you put it in, that was NOT good. Wonder how well he knows the Bilderbergs, hhmmm? For that matter, can you begin to fathom the dirty little secrets that Jobs died with? Remember, Gates & Jobs were really good friends back when Silicone Valley was still being innovative (misspelling deliberate), and wasn't so interested in making computer parts and software that controlled the world just to make money. Kinda makes one wonder.

suraj.sun wrote:"Bloomberg is reporting on Google's negotiation with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over 'how big a fine, which could amount to more than $10 million, it will have to pay for its breach of Apple's Safari browser. The fine would be the first by the FTC for a violation of Internet privacy as the agency steps up enforcement of the Web.' Last year, Google agreed to a settlement in which the FTC would monitor Google's privacy practices for an extended period of time. 'The 20-year settlement bars Google from misrepresenting how it handles user information and requires the company to follow policies that protect consumer data in new products.' This February, Google was found to be bypassing privacy controls in Safari by making the browser think a user was submitting a form, when they actually weren't. '(The code used by Google was part of its program to place the "+1" button in advertisements.) At the time, the company issued a statement saying that the circumvention wasn't intentional, but privacy groups were still quick to file complaints with the FTC over Google's actions. That was quickly followed by a class-action lawsuit and an investigation by European regulators.'"

Today's Slashdot story (and it's a biggie).

They have deserved the fine. I still hope they beat MS with the Motorola complaint though. That will enable a deal where MS has to stop "cross licensing" Android.
In this case they have just been crooks though.

OK, so I'm revisiting this due to NSA policy. I'm wondering how much info you think DuckDuckGo is handing over to the government. I'm finding no stats at all on this anywhere. Not even here.

They publish their traffic, but do they publish how much of that traffic they're handing over?

Nope.

Even if it's none, this should be published.

According to this article

“First, we are legally bound by our privacy policy and could go to jail if it was found to be willfully violated,” he tells me.

It would seem to me that they would go to jail if they did stick to the privacy policy, and handed nothing over to the NSA. How is this privacy-proven and legal to have that privacy policy, when the NSA demands info on users? Legally, doesn't the NSA bully these people into handing over info? Well, I can't say legally, because I don't believe it to be legal on the NSA's part, but you know what I mean. They would have to hand over info, would they not?

If the NSA says "collect data and hand it over", they're like employers are to their bill collectors. They have to collect.