Google Drops Privacy Tracking Bomb
We spent this winter chasing the sun and pointed our mobile office to the Southern California desert where the weather's great and the camping is free. Ah, the sun, the cacti . . . the bombs. The free campsites we love always seem to come at a price, and this spot was no exception. A Navy bombing range was within sight of our temporary abode, and nighttime explosions seen on the horizon were close enough to thump the ground beneath us. One night, we calculated that the blast took about nine and a half seconds to be heard. Now, do the math:
Sound travels at the approximate speed of 1,100 feet per second. With blasts seen about 9.5 seconds before being heard, that put those bombs just 10,450 feet away. Divide that by 5,280 feet in a mile and you have very big bombs exploding 1.9791667 miles away. And what on earth does this have to do with Google, you ask?
In doing a simple search for the speed of sound and how many feet in a mile, we discovered that Google is indeed going to take over the world! Before long, every web page visited will be tracked, logged, analyzed, stored, and marketed to accordingly in Googledom. With the search engine’s recent makeover, users have new powerful search and sorting options. But Google also has a responsibility to their users for not passing encoded Googlinks capable of tracking who knows what viewer history information. Which is exactly what you will do when simply right-clicking to copy a web address (also known as a Universal Resource Locator, or URL) from Google search result links.
Check it out for yourself. What do you think all this means?
So, that big bomb Google has dropped? No more absolute URL copying for direct links to search results. Right click to copy a link and you now get a GooglURL encoded with plenty of tracking voodoo. What’s more disturbing yet? It was dropped by a stealth bomber …
The code above means this: http://www.tripawds.com (our website)
Roll over any Google search result link and the browser status bar shows the actual URL. That’s pretty sneaky if you ask me. Not until a link is copied will the truth be told. In all fairness, Yahoo and other search engines have also started doing this.
If you prefer to defy assimilation, here’s what to do - beneath Google search links, a partial URL for the result is included in small green type, with no hyper link. Select that and copy if you don’t care to be part of the Google machine.
Apparently, this new redirect methodology has something to do with outbound search engine results pages. More like outright usurpers if you ask us. Check this Razzed blog for further Google outbound link tracking analysis: http://www.razzed.com/2009/02/12/analysis-of-google-outbound-link-tracking/
And try to pay attention where you’re sending people with your copied links. We sure will now.
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Jim Nelson and Rene Agredano are founders of Tripawds.com, a worlwide community for three legged dogs and their humans. They have been Redwood Technology Consortium members since 1998, and presently roam the U.S. in their RV with their three legged dog, Wyatt Ray. Read more about their travels at LiveWorkDream.com
Copyright 2010, Eureka Times-Standard Newspaper. The print version of this article first appeared in the 4/22/10 edition of the Times-Standard.
