By Thilak February 22, 2007

Stop Yahoo, Google from Spying on you

Amit Agarwal writes that Yahoo apparently uses Web Beacons and cookies to track you’re surfing habbits and then show ads or whatever accordingly.

What’s web beacon? Wikipedia defines web beacons as invisible objects that are embedded within email or web page to the user, but allows checking that a user has viewed the page or e-mail.

Thesedays, web users are getting more and more concerned towards privacy, especially after the AOL privacy leak. Luckily Yahoo allows you to opt-out of this by simple clicking this link. This way, you could stop Yahoo from spying on you.

Similarly, Google uses a cookie that expires in 2038 (perhaps, infinitely). This cookie contains a unique address which could identify and track down users between their sessions and preference. Deleting the cookie isn’t a solution because it re-appears and assigns you a new address. The only two ways to protect you’re privacy is to use proxy or annoymizing that cookie. Drag Anonymize me bookmarklet to your toolbar and go to google.com (like always), click on the bookmarklet, click OK again and save the preference. By doing this, you’ll be having the same cookie as many others do, so nothing to worry about the privacy.  

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Discussion

Comments for “Stop Yahoo, Google from Spying on you”

  • I dont think its important for me...and for you really?
  • I agree spying is really a big thing on the net, and for being private is really important. I did what you have posted here, but I'm curious do I have to "anonymize me" everytime?
  • another way is you can use Firefox + greasemonkey + Google Anonymiser http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/10448

    hehe done :)
  • I agree with Bryan. Theres so many cookies out there. Will it make much difference. Good post tho.
  • Lot of Ad providing companies like Kanoodle also use cookies to track your preferences for sites.

    Good post Thilak.
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