Check your Google history
history.google.com
history.google.com
Having a searchable search history feels kinda meta, but this basically solves the problem of "I know I found this webpage a while back but I can't find it again". Ideally this sort of thing would be handled by the browser's history feature and stored locally, but the browser can't (or at least doesn't) correlate between "you searched for this term" and "you clicked this result". I also find that the browser's history search leaves something to be desired, and let's not increase Firefox's memory footprint even more by making it better!
(Browser history is also stored online for most browsers these days, and especially if you use Chrome then Google already have your history anyway).
Chrome Sync supports optional client-side encryption, and Firefox Sync always uses client-side encryption.
Do you honestly believe that if the NSA decided they wanted your browser history, the encryption used by Chrome or Firefox would stymie them for too long?
I guess I'm just not really clear on what folks are worried about happening with these history data. Is the concern that the data could be leaked, revealing potentially privacy-compromising information? Or that Google might mine it in an attempt to make a buck off of your metadata? Or that the government might use it to identify you as a potential political dissident?
Personally, I find the Google search history to be useful, though less useful lately since DDG is my primary search engine now. I don't quite get the knee-jerk "this is creepy" outrage and fear I see from some folks about this feature.
Yes, I do. But I also believe that they would more easily access my computer after I inserted the master password, or detain me with false accuses until I give up, and maybe more. We're talking about organizations that do not abide by the law. But one thing is to worry for the NSA coming after you, another is to keep your history hidden from Google.
I submit that if you don't want Google to know about your searches, you should not use Google (or at the very least, not use Google with a browser logged in to a Google service).
That said, I can imagine someone who wants to use a search engine that he doesn't trust (because the results are better but wants to keep his privacy): for example a girl may want to search for pregnancy tests but she may dislike to be later targeted by ads about that.
You are right that one could simply avoid the service or at least avoid to be logged in, but most people are oblivious of these things.
(And your point about hiding from the NSA vs. Google is what I was trying to get at in my comment above, which for some reason got downvoted quite heavily).
If they care about your browser history specifically, then in a battle between one individual and a government-level adversary, I'd bet on the latter; it's unlikely they'd try to break the encryption when they could use keyloggers, cameras, or any number of other methods that work fine on targeted individuals. (Or,
But if they care about doing blanket capture and analysis of everyone's history, then yes, I think the encryption used by Chrome and Firefox should work. Security bugs are always possible, of course, and browsers are quite notorious for them, but the more widely a security bug is exploited, the more rapidly it'll be detected and fixed.
The solution to this is not to turn off Google's search history, but to use a search engine (like DDG) who purportedly have security and anonymity built in.
I don't have a google account, my main search engine is duckduckgo ( I occasionally use google search but always use the anonymous encrypted version) and my browser (opera) offers a history search feature which works well.
But still, I deactivated it. The potential disagreement surpasses the benefits. Whenever someone is looking at my screen, I'm always concerned that an embarrassing previous query pop up.
Example: I'm subscribed to pewdiepie on Youtube (the other subscriptions being mostly dev stuff). ALL the videos recommended now are garbage made for/by mentally challenged 14 year olds. It was even worse when I had YT history on. At least now I get somewhat relevant related videos (useful when learning about a new technology, a startup, etc).
== Edit
You do realise that I'm subscribed to only 1 _shitty_ channel and 15+ _real_ ones? Actually, this might mean that Youtube's algorithms are skewed toward popular stuff (there's no contest between pewds and Google Developers, lol).
I'm confused.
But seriously, it could probably be improved. Does anyone know if down voting videos affects recommendations? I also wish I could explicitly ignore things on the recommendations section before I watch them. Just out of principle I don't want to give them a view and potentially ad money just so I can down vote them.
Watching other people play games in particular is really silly to me when I can just play them myself. It's just one of those weird fads that isn't for me.
Basically Google changed their algorithm to recommend videos based on time watched instead of just views. Which massively favored let's plays because they are so long. They also promote channels based on geographical location. Pewdiepie had an advantage somehow because he had a fanbase in Sweden and moved to Italy.
This might also explain parent comment's problem (recommendations favoring let's plays because they are longer.)
sqlite3 ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/places.sqlite 'select last_visit_date,url from moz_places;' |
perl -pe 's/%([0-9a-f]{2})/sprintf("%s", pack("H2",$1))/eig' |
grep -E 'google\.[a-z]{2,3}/search?' |
sed 's/^\(.*\)|.*[?&]q=\([^&]*\)\(&.*\)\?/\1|\2/' |
perl -pe 's/%([0-9a-f]{2})/sprintf("%s", pack("H2",$1))/eig' |
tr '|+' ' ' | sort -k2,2 | uniq -f1 | sort -k1,1nI realize that the phone company can to some extent track your location as well based on the cell tower but that isn't quite as accurate or convenient as the GPS data.
the phone company can to some extent track your location as well based on the cell tower
The phone companies sell this data[1], and it can be obtained in civil court cases[2] and it is usually pretty accurate[3].
convenient as the GPS data
Convenient for whom? You can't ever see it, but the network operator and its clients can see it very easily.
Contrast that to Google Location Services, where you have an interface to remove parts of your history and/or you can turn it off completely.
Plus it is used to give you useful stuff like Google Now travel time notifications for places you regularly travel to.
[1] eg: http://www.mobilephonelocate.com/cell-phone-tracking.html
[2] http://www.iiiweb.net/forensic-services/cell-phone-tower-tri...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking#Network-b...
This location history came up w/o even verifying my identity or asking for re-authentication. (I'm on a machine that has multiple Google profiles signed in.)
An adversary mining my location history for metadata is _much more worrisome_ than somebody finding out I listened to the whole `Kagerou Project` playlist on youtube for the third time.
I'm not upset that Google has this data; I do use Google Now which practically exists solely to extract metadata from my routine. I just can't believe its not behind a `re-authentication wall.`
Citation please. Or at least you meant to say Google still _anonymously_ collects this data?
Here it just means it won't be tied to your google account but to whatever kind of profile google uses to track searches you make.
Eh, whut?
I especially like having a graph that tells me I need to sleep more regularly [1] and I also like having location history that tells me I'm a very boring person in the real world (and that my phone's GPS is wildly inaccurate).
Location history isn't "your privacy on the Internet", it's "your privacy".
Something I'd like to do (someone else asked for an e.g.) is look back at programming language searches, as they'll nearly always have the lang in the query. I'd be able to see when I started learning e.g. python and had to google everything, when I picked up other languages, how those searches decreased (or increased) as I learned more. Lots of interesting stuff.
I have no problem with collecting your own search history, storing it locally, and analyzing it (though I doubt it would produce any groundbreaking insights). I just think it's safer if you store it yourself.
I turned it off circa 2006 and I'm glad to see that it's still off.
Feeling determined and stubborn, I even tried writing a quick CasperJS script to scrape the page data but quickly ran into two-factor auth obstacles. Since Google won't let you login with an application-specific password and doesn't have any API endpoint which devs can hit to get this data, it makes things rather tricky! Getting easy, downloadable access to this search history directly from Google doesn't seem within the grasp of even a determined developer at this point.
What are your rates, and are they surprising?
Turn off any adblockers you have, and go to this website: http://www.imgburn.com/
your mission is to successfully download the installer to imgburn.
good luck.
http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2013/12/09/le-truc-quun-codeur...
That is a lot of searches.
Or rather badass, sophisticated and cutting edge comp sci topics? Stuff that could ... simplify the application process at any software company?
I'd bet some analysis could show common search patterns, or paths of understanding that programmers go from noob to various levels of enlightenment.
I love how I can access years of search queries for words in other languages in an extension like Instant Translate: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instant-translate/...
I am however shocked by the fact that so many people are okay with it being legal for any company to collect such data from people we all know full well do not understand the consequences. So called opt-in is by far not sufficient permission for this. That should come with a signed contract that includes penalty clauses that could in extremis bankrupt the company and jail it's owners.
A contract that can only be signed by consenting adults. Google now stalks your children and sells their data. Are you really okay with that?
It's ironic that it's called "history", because we obviously haven't learned anything from it.
[EDIT] Never mind I found it. It's under "Settings"
[EDIT EDIT] Thanks for migstopheles for the direct link.
The point I'm trying to make is either you trust Google to abide by your wishes and not save your search history, or you don't.
It all boils down to risk. Yes, there is some data that companies are required to keep for N years due to auditing, etc. That's unavoidable. But there comes a point where keeping data (especially personal information that is usually covered by numerous laws and 200-page policies from bodies such as the credit card industry) becomes a liability. Companies typically don't like liabilities, and therefor delete it.
Now, there are data that a company might consider keeping because the income generated by keeping it outweighs the risk associated by mishandling it. And you're right, there's no way of knowing what Google considers this to be. But that was my original point- if you don't trust Google to delete your history when you ask, then why do you trust them to not keep it in the first place when you opt-out?
This is not news. Yes, Google collects your history and associates with your account _if you opt in_, OR it still collects the information anonymously. That's nothing new. Neither is Google the ONLY company doing it. Apple does it. Facebook does it. Microsoft does it. Every tom-dick-harry and their analytics suits do it. Your ISP does it. NSA does it. And your browser, your computer and your phone does it.
At least Google tells you what it collects, how, and let's you control it. It also tells you what happens WHEN YOU DELETE THE HISTORY: (https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/465?hl=en) "When you delete items from your Web History, they are no longer associated with your Google Account. However, Google may store searches in a separate logs system to prevent spam and abuse and to improve our services."
Hacker News - ladies and gentleman.
Example: Yea I clicked on the "Oprah gives a car to everyone" video, but right now I'm trying to watch videos relevant to PHP security, and I don't care to see talkshow outtakes in the "related" sidebar.
Switching to DDG really took care of this particular problem.
Also, DDG has severely decreased my search activity.
That is not sufficient. Recipients of your emails must also not use any Google services (also recipients of their emails etc).
Either way, I turned it back on recently. There are a few things Google requires this feature on such as keeping a history on the Google Maps app for Android.
At any rate, I wish they did more visualizations, and allowed you to see more than the top 5 results for the ones they have.
I wish I could see my oldest.
I also wish someone would create a script which would search through my searches (!) and infer what my interests are, over time, and display them on a horizontal timeline.
Who is Maurice Frazier? I don't know, but I searched for him today. Time to change the password...
I've had web history turned off for a while now.
My Top sites: 1. www.google.com 2. stackoverflow.com 3. wordpress.org 4. en.wikipedia.org 5. maps.google.com
It is kinda bookmarks simplified
I wish there is good api to scrape search hist for analysis..
Me: No thanks, I disabled it long ago although we all know Google prob logs all of your IP activity (ad targeting and stuff)
Moral of the story, just take a quick look anyways.
But they don't get it. So when they inevitably give me that account, I go and delete and disable the search history.
But let me tell you. To disable the search history I first need to open that page, and I've seen a bunch of searches I honestly wish I wouldn't have.
I think I'll get above your cheap outrage and say I did the right thing by going in and disabling the search history.
The thing I "advocate" happens to be the best practice recommended by Google (if you'd care to dig into the docs, and no one does) for sharing the administration and viewing of Site Analytics groups (they're called Site Analytics "accounts" which are inside Google "accounts" so you can imagine that many folks get confused over what is what).
The best practice is not to create a new Google account and not to share that account's password with strangers (or even friends). There's a method for sharing just analytics with other Google Accounts, buried in the Site Analytics admin panel.
With that setup, the client will be creating a Site Analytics account within his personal Google account, and sharing said Site Analytics with my personal account. And I won't be able to see, let alone delete or disable their search history. Alas, that's not how things usually go.
People just don't get it, so they create new Google accounts over my head, share it with everyone, and everyone's search history ends up in the shared accounts. So when that accounts gets to me, I delete & disable search history. I know for a fact no one who ever logged into this shared account intended to share their browsing history with people.
Exacerbating the problem is the fact Google accounts are intentionally designed so that you log in and forget you're logged in. Google wants to know who you are. The accounts are also designed so that if you want a standalone account for analytics, it's a full-blown Google account, so you end up with people's search history in there (and a bunch of other services no one asked about, like email, docs etc.). And people don't understand the implications of sharing a Google account they've been logged into.
By the way, thanks for twisting my words and intent out of shape like you did. Now that I've had to waste the time to explain my original post as if to an imbecile, I'm sure everyone reading this will gain clarity about the situation I was describing. Cheers.
EDIT. How Badly would deleting all my history effect my google searches?
I am sure everybody here knows that this only means that Google apps don't use your history, but it's still saved.
It's funny, but I trust Microsoft entirely more than Google.