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"Google Alarm" Firefox addon alerts you when you're sending data to Google

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Re: "Google Alarm" Firefox addon alerts you when you're sending data to Google

#11

Post by nhnifong »

Just a list of all the things I can think of the at will trigger that alarm.

Google analytics, Embedded Youtube videos, Adsense, Any of Google's websites, Typing in the search box.

The chrome extension is even funnier. That would probably never be silent.

EDIT: Turns out typing in the search box doesn't set it off

Re: "Google Alarm" Firefox addon alerts you when you're sending data to Google

#13

Post by Groxx »

Groxx wrote: post #6

From a comment: > Didn’t show any alerts when I hit google.co.uk Which probably means it's just looking for links to "google.com" in the page. In which case I'd doubt it'd catch connections in flash files, and it probably false-positives if you have blockers in place. (edit: checked the JS file, that's exactly what it does. Looks for URLs of: google, gmail.com, youtube.com, blogspot.com)

late-edit:

Correction, they search all elements for these domains / files:

  google
  gmail.com
  youtube.com
  blogspot.com
  google-analytics.com/urchin.js
  google-analytics.com/ga.js
  googlesyndication.com
  show_ads.js
  doubleclick.net
  youtube.com/v/
And finally a ++ if you're using Chrome. Fairly sure that's all of them, I finally opened the file in a proper editor.

And, importantly, it appears they're searching for that text, not attributes, so this post will probably set off the alarms.

Re: "Google Alarm" Firefox addon alerts you when you're sending data to Google

#18

Post by jrockway »

rquirk wrote: post #8
niekmaas wrote: post #5

Considering the amount of websites that use Google Analytics this will result in an almost constant sound. At least the websites I browse often. But it's an interesting project to make people aware of the amount of data they send to Google. I just dont think that people that do not know this will install a plugin like this.. Or use FireFox at all.

I'm just glad that analytics is on its own domain. Google could easily have placed it at google.com/analytics and it would be much trickier to block. As it is, an entry in hosts or blacklist it in NoScript is all you need.

Adblock Plus does a better job of blocking than those mechanisms, however, and it could handle google.com/analytics just as easily as google-analytics.com.

Re: "Google Alarm" Firefox addon alerts you when you're sending data to Google

#19

Post by throw_away »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #16
ScotterC wrote: post #2

Wouldn't it make more sense if the alarm was for when you're not sending data to the Google?

If we make the alarm sound like a vuvuzela it'll be like the World Cup all over again.

sudo /usr/sbin/tcpdump -i en1 -l host google.com or host google-analytics.com 2>/dev/null | perl -ne 'if (time - $lasttime > 1) { `say zzzzzzzz`; print "spoke to google at ", scalar localtime, "\n"; } $lasttime = time;'

Re: "Google Alarm" Firefox addon alerts you when you're sending data to Google

#20

Post by ElbertF »

yikulju wrote: post #17

if you're afraid of Google I made a Chrome extension for you. (it tells you whether or not you're logged into your Google account) https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kehceocjihegfhln...

If you're afraid of Google why would you use Chrome?
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