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Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

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Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#21

Post by nefitty »

aerovistae wrote: post #17

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…

Well, Google does have a team that monitors the dark side of what passes through it. This article is from 2012, so I'm sure their capability has stepped up significantly since then. https://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-google...

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

aerovistae wrote: post #17

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…

> It's never been clear to me whether this is superstition or if there's truth to it. Google is fully HTTPS-- how could your searches be monitored unless google was handing them over to the government?

They could be monitored if the government had surreptitiously gained access to Google servers or internal data transfers by compromising infrastructure such as Google's datacenter-to-datacenter links.

I use that example because I recall a leak (IIRC, either as part of or contemporaneous to early rounds of the Snowden leaks) that the NSA had done exactly that with unencrypted inter-data-center links of Google and other entities with multiple datacenters, and reports shortly after that that Google and several others had taken action to secure and encrypt those links afterwards.

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#24

Post by JJJollyjim »

alexanderson wrote: post #4

I ran it using private Safari mode (akin to Incognito in Chrome). There were naturally no consequences to my Google Account, nor my IP Address.

Private mode doesn't run a VPN, right? So your IP address is still associated with the searches.

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#25

Post by branchless »

aerovistae wrote: post #17

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…

I often wonder if I'm going to get arrested searching for the best way to kill a hung child process.

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#26

Post by DanBC »

aerovistae wrote: post #17

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…

I think Google has some monitoring for images of child sexual abuse and terms used to find those images. I'm not sure what they do if you search for those terms or if they just return blank pages.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/18/uk-us-dar...

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#27

Post by sml156 »

curiousgal wrote: post #6

As I am currently in a North African country I freaked out when the ISIS shit started popping so I immediately deleted my google history and nothing happened now. I still don't get why something so malicious was upvoted so much.

I believe the original intent of that site was to get you on the NSA watch list

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#28

Post by branchless »

JJJollyjim wrote: post #24
alexanderson wrote: post #4

I ran it using private Safari mode (akin to Incognito in Chrome). There were naturally no consequences to my Google Account, nor my IP Address.

Private mode doesn't run a VPN, right? So your IP address is still associated with the searches.

Exactly, surely they are cross referencing your browser making requests with your IP one second, your "anonymous" mode the next then another sync with gmail from your gmail page. And I'd bet that is far less sophisticated than it gets.

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#29

Post by protomyth »

edgarvaldes wrote: post #7
curiousgal wrote: post #6

As I am currently in a North African country I freaked out when the ISIS shit started popping so I immediately deleted my google history and nothing happened now. I still don't get why something so malicious was upvoted so much.

The name of the site is pretty clear.

There is a small difference between ruining ones search history and being brought to the attention of whatever authority is watching[1]. It does seem like a https://xkcd.com/576/ situation applied to search.

1) I would bet our web filter would be sending me some reports

Re: Ask HN: Did anyone use ruinmysearchhistory and get Google account suspended today?

#30

Post by [deleted] »

JJJollyjim wrote: post #24
alexanderson wrote: post #4

I ran it using private Safari mode (akin to Incognito in Chrome). There were naturally no consequences to my Google Account, nor my IP Address.

Private mode doesn't run a VPN, right? So your IP address is still associated with the searches.

[deleted]
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