RSSmsn messenger censorship - blocking privacy?
January 8th, 2007 by 
Adam
A recent article on The Register reported that msn messenger (the network itself rather than the program) bans you from sending certain phrases to your contacts. One of which is “scroogle.org” - this is odd considering that Scroogle is a tool that alters Google searches and has nothing to do with Microsoft whatsoever. As El Reg also stated, it may just be that the term “Scroogle” is something particularly unsavoury and it’s just that nobody knows it’s true meaning. However, this story got me (and hopefully you) thinking.
Every time you perform a Google search, your IP address is logged and a uniquely identifiable cookie is placed on your system. This means that there will always be a record somewhere of all the searches you’ve ever made. Google say that they won’t hand out this information to anyone unless requested to by a law enforcement agency. But this begs the question… if Google don’t use the data, why do they keep it?
Scroogle.org perform the search on your behalf, so only their IP address is recorded. When Google send the cookie with the search results, Scroogle automatically trash it and then present you with all the same results Google would give you, except without adverts. Ok, the interface isn’t quite as nice as Google’s, and they don’t offer video / image / advanced search features, but that’s not really the point. As I said, this story got me thinking about the possible reason or need for Google to keep records of who searched for what and when - this reminded me of an EFF article about how to protect your online search privacy. Google are a company. An organisation driven by profits. If you think of the logs and databases involved in indexing every single one of the billions of searches made worldwide every day, you wonder what’s in it for them. The hardware and storage requirement alone must cost them millions of dollars. And I quite simply can’t fathom the reason for it.
So it seems to me that protecting your search privacy is quite simple: Bookmark http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html and use it for searching the web. You get no adverts, you keep your privacy and you get exactly the same search results. So why wouldn’t you? Probably for the same reason that Microsoft blocked the url…
… nobody knows!
Posted in Privacy, Digital Rights | 
January 9th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Maybe it really doesn’t matter. What if it is for some new tool they are developing in Google Labs, like what type of things a person tends to search for.
Just my opinion =)
January 9th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Exactly - you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t matter. If you’re happy to continue to use services like Google in full knowledge of all the facts, that’s absolutely fine.
But I think that’s the key. I’ll not stop using Google’s services - I still use Gmail, Google Apps For Your Domain, Adsense, Picassa and so on, and I certainly won’t be cancelling all that now that I know about the cookies and the IP logging. But I think that it’s important for people to be aware of the methods used by companies like Google (they’re certainly not alone in these kinds of methods) for purposes of tracking etc. I also think it’s important for users to know about ways to protect their privacy - this way they can take steps to do so if they wish. That way, people can choose what information to “give” away, and not just have their privacy “taken” away.
January 10th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Interesting…
I always knew that Google keeps a track of my mail, my searches, my deleted mail, etc etc. Also, your point (in the comment) about whether there is something we choose to hide is true. I search/mail for things which aren’t a big deal and I wouldn’t mind Google having a copy of them… But like you said… IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO KNOW