

Some Google employees defect, then rebel - citizenkeys
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/12/24/ex.google.employees/

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trotsky
I had heard of facebook disconnect, but not of his newer chrome extension
simply called "disconnect":

<http://www.disconnectere.com/>

 _If you’re a typical web user, you’re unintentionally sending your browsing
and search history with your name and other personal information to third
parties and search engines whenever you’re online.

Take control of the data you share with Disconnect!

From the developer of the top-10-rated Facebook Disconnect extension,
Disconnect lets you:

• Disable tracking by third parties like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and
Yahoo, without requiring any setup or significantly degrading the usability of
the web.

• Truly depersonalize searches on search engines like Google and Yahoo (by
blocking identifying cookies not just changing the appearance of results
pages), while staying logged into other services — e.g., so you can search
anonymously on Google and access iGoogle at once.

• See how many resource and cookie requests are blocked, in real time.

• Easily unblock services, by clicking the toolbar button then services (and
reloading current pages) — e.g., so you can play games on Facebook._

~~~
koudelka
Anything like this for Safari? All I could find is
<http://www.orbicule.com/incognito/>

edit: Ghostery (mentioned elsewhere in the thread) works with Safari.
<http://www.ghostery.com/download>

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corin_
"To name a few practices, Google can track search queries over time, target
ads to its Gmail users based on the contents of e-mails, and use a person's
location data to determine which shops' ads it will show."

Not only are they common knowledge (not just in the tech community but even
known by people such as my mother, who's extent of computer abilities is being
able to use Skype/Gmail/Google), but it's often easy to notice even with no
technical knowledge at all, just by looking at what the adverts actually are.
Seems odd, even if he never worked directly in that area, or cared much about
privacy, that he never knew that kind of stuff.

(Or possible he's talking on levels way and above, and the writer of the
article was just listing the most basic examples for readers.)

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mark_l_watson
That was a good article. I just installed both Disconnect and Facebook
Disconnect on Chrome, which I mostly use. I enabled Google text adds but
blocked everything else.

I would like the Internet to evolve as both a free source of information and
also as a platform for great commercial products like Netflix streaming
movies, Hulu Plus, etc.

For information blocking to not affect the web experience, enough people need
to be willing to donate money if they choose to do so. For example, Salon.com
runs interesting articles and I have made small donations over the years (and
one earlier today).

~~~
Create
look at Ghostery - works with crome, FF etc.

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

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wedesoft
Just install EasyPrivacy [1] and Fanboy Annoyances [2] for Adblock Plus.

[1] <http://easylist.adblockplus.org/>

[2] <http://www.fanboy.co.nz/>

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thewordpainter
i get a kick out of these multi-million dollar packages that are strikingly
similar to the signing bonuses that professional athletes receive. it's about
time professional startup-ers get the same treatment. we're stimulating the
economy as much as anybody.

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mbesto
I just installed Disconnect on Chrome. I thought this was funny: (but not
surpising)

Mashable.com - 48 blocked requests

I have no idea how that site even loads today with that much "crap" on it's
site.

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yanw
The article doesn’t lack in sensationalism, and very much inline with the
recent Internet scare stories running in major publications, one could argue
about the motives of these newspapers in trying to demonize online advertising
as it’s arguably hurting their bottom line.

Privacy is important but we need to keep things in prospective, ads are
propelling a huge wave of innovation and a huge industry. The reasonable way
to preserve the rights of users is to grand them control over their data, and
not just demonize ads altogether.

I personally prefer relevant (targeted) ads. Online ads are also measurable
and such are fairer to the advertiser than a hail-merry print ad.

This aversion towards smart ads seems a bit anti-progressive, it's obvious
that personalization in devices, media and of course the advertising to
monetize the ecosystem is the logical evolution of consumer technology.

And It’s not just a case of paying with ‘privacy’ instead of money, many of
the webservices available today won’t exist unless they are free, and are used
by many people which their usage patterns are collected as feedback.

