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

Post by curiousgal » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:54 PM UTC

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…

Post by nqzero » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #29

edgarvaldes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Post by Klathmon » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #25

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.

Post by curiousgal » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

sml156 wrote: post #27

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

Post by manufacturious » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:59 PM UTC

curiousgal wrote: post #31

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…

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…