I'm curious: does anyone know whether Google searches are truly monitored, and how, if it's HTTPS? I showed ruinmysearchhistory.com to a Pakistani Muslim friend, not having clicked it myself, and he thought it was funny until the ISIS application parts started coming up, when he consequently freaked out, as you might imagine. But this got me wondering -- it seems to be widely accepted that googling things like "how t…
Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
101–110 of 124 posts
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#102[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was to overwhelm the NSA watch list with software engineers. I'm reminded of a Usenet campaign in the mid-late 90s, adding hot terms to sigs.
Software engineers are already on the NSA exploit-their-hardware-so-we-can-insert-backdoors list.
Sad but true :(
But not, at least, on no-fly lists.
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#104I ran it yesterday and I open my Google account today. It's not suspended.
It probably I ran it without signing in Google.
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could it simply be the speed with which the queries are made, making a bot-blocker suspect a bot? Edit: apologies, meant to reply to OP, not here. To parent, I already upvote your comment - it's pretty cool, but also scary that we now have conversations about whether we're being surveiled by our government (in the US) as a casual normality. The only difference that appears to remain is that we openly talk about our g…
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.) One might describe it as a social botnet: somebody convinced a bunch of people to execute some code on their computer that sent automated search queries. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66357?hl=en "Google's Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express pe…
Does that mean any malicious website can shut down any web user's Google account?
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.) One might describe it as a social botnet: somebody convinced a bunch of people to execute some code on their computer that sent automated search queries. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66357?hl=en "Google's Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express pe…
This whole incident has convinced me to actually use a tool like this, so I'm going to write one and distribute the extension code for free. I promise you won't be able to detect it, so good luck. I think anyone who wants the ability to obscure their search footprint should have it. And if you think otherwise, I'm doubly convinced it's necessary.
TrackMeBot turns 10 years old this summer: http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#107I'm curious: does anyone know whether Google searches are truly monitored, and how, if it's HTTPS? I showed ruinmysearchhistory.com to a Pakistani Muslim friend, not having clicked it myself, and he thought it was funny until the ISIS application parts started coming up, when he consequently freaked out, as you might imagine. But this got me wondering -- it seems to be widely accepted that googling things like "how t…
Google is not fully https - its the road customer google that is fully https - internal traffic is not encrypted. And internal traffic goes worldwide for google.
I don't know if it still works, but Google used to support network providers force non-ssl searches using DNS poisoning. BT's WiFi offering used to do this, which is one of the reasons I stopped using it.
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#108I'm curious: does anyone know whether Google searches are truly monitored, and how, if it's HTTPS? I showed ruinmysearchhistory.com to a Pakistani Muslim friend, not having clicked it myself, and he thought it was funny until the ISIS application parts started coming up, when he consequently freaked out, as you might imagine. But this got me wondering -- it seems to be widely accepted that googling things like "how t…
Most Third World governments control ISPs and DNS queries can be easily monitored but whether those are implicative or not depends on where the content embedded in the search results is hosted/served from. Also, even if Google is fully HTTPS, if a query returns images hosted on unsecured websites, those urls will be plainly visible and hence implicative. Edit: The embedded thumbnails are actually encrypted as pointed…
So now we consider US to be Third World country? :)
Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?
#109The kind of stuff you can afford to do only when you're a US citizen and thus not a potential victim of some arbitrary US custom officer deciding you can't come in anymore and have no appeal. What I'm saying is, if you're not a US citizen, don't participate in those kinds of actions. The problems these campaigns highlight are real, but being foreigners, we have no legal recourses in the US in many areas, and can end…
Well this is a weirdly US-centric view.. You seem to assume that all people not living in the US are actually just waiting to emigrate their. I'm quite happy in Spain, thanks!