Tag Archives: cookies
Concerned About Privacy? Scroogle Scrapes Your Searches
Posted on 24. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
0 Comments
It’s no joke that Google is everywhere – we hear this piece of information so often it’s beginning to become something that we no longer think about. There are some serious privacy issues that are presented when thinking of how much information Google collects in order to make a tidy profit, and most of us just assume that we can expect Google to make the best judgment about what to do with that information.
Enter Scroogle. If anything else, I guarantee you will find some entertainment by visiting this unique site. But its main purpose is to offer folks the ability to conduct searches without having any data sent back to Google. The way it works is pretty straightforward: the cookie that is assigned a unique identifier by Google is used once and then trashed by the Scroogle servers within an hour, and their logs are deleted within 48 hours. Therefore, Google gets a cookie that has some information, but has no real way to use it since it is used only once and then thrown away.
The site even offers instructions on how to make Scroogle the default search in whatever browser you use with their own SSL sever, claiming under the instructions for Chrome that it “phones home a lot”.
According to the site statistics, Scroogle is used quite a bit. It does over 300,000 scraped searches every day and is on a steady rise. It’s ranked as one of the top ten thousand sites on the web by Alexa, an impressive feat considering a search (non-Scroogled, by the way) for the site offered very little information on the site. There’s a Firefox add-in for Scroogle, but I suspect that we won’t be seeing an official Chrome Extension anytime soon. Give it a shot if you are concerned that Google or perhaps another organization such as your ISP is looking over your shoulder a bit too much.
Video: Managing Cookies in Chrome Browser
Posted on 07. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
I came across this Google video today and found it useful. Cookies are an important element in the overall web browsing experience as they allow you to have settings saved on your favorite websites by storing some of your preferences. Plus, this video actually shows you how to create exceptions for cookies on particular sites if you were inclined to do so. To get a broad sense about cookies and how to manage them in Chrome browser, check out this clip:
It’s done pretty quickly in the example provided here, but you can get to your cookies settings by going to the Options menu and then from the Under the Hood Tab you can select the Content Settings button at the top.
There used to be a lot of concern over cookies and what kind of information is actually stored, but the reality is that since sites are no longer static pages having cookies is helpful. Cookies are almost necessary now so that you can avoid performing repetitive tasks on the web. There still are some privacy concerns, but most websites that are reputable have strong privacy policies and are in business to provide the end user with a good web experience.
Google has some pretty strongly worded privacy statements as well, however I think some of that is a direct response to the media’s reaction in regards to how much they actually know about internet users. Paying attention to their actions as opposed to their words is a key factor in this realm. Here’ s to hoping that they remain committed to doing the right thing as they continue to become ever more omnipresent.
