paranoid ? or is Google tracking me - and you ?
- Thread starter Wallace
- Start date
NO. There was no other explanation. I did not communicate about the site via e-mail, it was all in person and over the phone. The keywords showed up clearly based on the site, which existed in my browser's history but was nonetheless a local file on my harddisk.
'Lawsuit protects Gmail users from privacy infringements'
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/h...s-gmail-users-from-privacy-infringements.html
'Google to scrub slurped UK Wi-Fi data'
'Significant achievement', trumpets Information Commissioner' by Lester Haines
"Google has agreed to delete the slurped Wi-Fi data its Street View spymobiles
"inadvertently collected" as they prowled the UK's highways and byways.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/19/google_wi_fi/
'Google Street View: A Systematic Invasion of Privacy'
"After "accidentally" gathering 600 gigabytes of private information in the process of
creating Street View, Google finds itself under unprecedented attack from nations
around the world.
In the UK, a murderer, Steven Hodgson, used it [street view] to target his victimâs
home this year before breaking in.
Ashleigh Hallâs family were very upset by images of her captured on Google Street
View shortly before she was killed by the man who had stalked her on Facebook."
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/google-street-view-a-systematic-invasion-of-privacy/?singlepage=true
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/h...s-gmail-users-from-privacy-infringements.html
'Google to scrub slurped UK Wi-Fi data'
'Significant achievement', trumpets Information Commissioner' by Lester Haines
"Google has agreed to delete the slurped Wi-Fi data its Street View spymobiles
"inadvertently collected" as they prowled the UK's highways and byways.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/19/google_wi_fi/
'Google Street View: A Systematic Invasion of Privacy'
"After "accidentally" gathering 600 gigabytes of private information in the process of
creating Street View, Google finds itself under unprecedented attack from nations
around the world.
In the UK, a murderer, Steven Hodgson, used it [street view] to target his victimâs
home this year before breaking in.
Ashleigh Hallâs family were very upset by images of her captured on Google Street
View shortly before she was killed by the man who had stalked her on Facebook."
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/google-street-view-a-systematic-invasion-of-privacy/?singlepage=true
Google absolutely DOES track everything. That is why I use Firefox with the NoScript plug-in and have googlesyndication, googleadsense, google-anaylitics, and all other google tracking scripts permanently blocked. You would be shocked to see how many tracking, analytical, traffic reporting scripts run on each and every website. NoScript allows you to see and block or allow scripts from running any any web page you visit. Other big tracking and targeted ad script domains include: doubleclick.net, quantserve.com, scorecardresearch.com, and adform.net. At LEAST one of these is embeded into almost every web page on the net.
Oh by the way how many of you knew that this site (yes ET) allows quantserve.com to run scripts on your computer (unless you have them blocked with NoScript like I do)?
Take a look at what Quantum captures and reports:
http://www.quantcast.com/
Take a look at what Quantum captures and reports:
http://www.quantcast.com/
what exactly - do you know - do these do ?
but I do wonder how they're able to obtain the following info, if in fact it's off the user
computer or are they using a different source ?
http://www.quantcast.com/measurement: "Demographics
Learn the gender, age, children per household, education status, income levels and
other characteristics of audiences."
To be honest I do not know how they obtain their data.
What is obvious though, is if they can tell a customer (web site owner) the kind of information that they claim to be able to provide, then it means that somehow they are able to correlate enough information about the web sites visitors to identify the specific person. If you can't identify who specifically was the visitor then there would be no way to determine their education level, age, gender, and number of people in their household. in other words if you let them track you, then they know you you are and pretty much everything about you.
Now it might be that they only collect their data from online forms you fill out on various sites and merge the data from multiple sites to create a personal profile of you. The scary thing is if they are doing this, they might even have access to your SSN or credit card data.
Wow, spooky.. :eek: So, that ends our privacy at our homes also! 
Maverickz: I don't care about data mining/collection, I expect it to happen at any
site I visit, many sites identify my Vancouver, Canada location
Quantcast are collecting data from millions - hundreds of millions of computers so
it's not surprising they can create a database of 'families', tho probably a much
smaller quantity but via tracking - in Canada the census information is sold-off to
companies, the data includes postal codes income and whatever else so it all but
identifies individual homeowners
what would concern me is if a 'script' loaded onto my computer permanently, but
I'm presuming antivirus/malware sw would identify it, mind you, just how much info
can be collecting just visiting a site ?
site I visit, many sites identify my Vancouver, Canada location
Quantcast are collecting data from millions - hundreds of millions of computers so
it's not surprising they can create a database of 'families', tho probably a much
smaller quantity but via tracking - in Canada the census information is sold-off to
companies, the data includes postal codes income and whatever else so it all but
identifies individual homeowners
what would concern me is if a 'script' loaded onto my computer permanently, but
I'm presuming antivirus/malware sw would identify it, mind you, just how much info
can be collecting just visiting a site ?