Live data from Hacker News

Ruin My Search History

ruinmysearchhistory.com

131–140 of 211 posts

Re: Ruin My Search History

#132
post #78
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a weird one yesterday. I went to the New York Times using private browsing and read a single article in the relationship section (something about wedding speeches) and then noticed that the next page I went to 90% of the recommended articles were engagement announcements. I guess things are hard when you only have a single data-point to base recommendations off.

I always find it amusing when you sign up for a service, and then for the next little while, half the ads you see are for that service. "Uh... but I've already signed up..."

I got ads for a mouse (similar model) after it was bought.

Re: Ruin My Search History

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's annoying, history is useful sometimes, and logging in to multiple times to multiple sites is a chore. Edit: grammar

It depends. I have multiple windows (incognito and normal) containing many tabs. It takes copying the URL, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V, Enter. History is important, but the site is called "ruinmysearchhistory.com". I visit websites I know with my normal window, the rest is mostly in incognito and if it's something I want to remember, I'll make sure to include it (i.e: visit it in normal mode, Evernote, Bookmarks, email to myself…

You could just 'Right Click->Open in Incognito' instead of manually copying the URL, at least in Chrome.

Re: Ruin My Search History

#135
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it amusing when you sign up for a service, and then for the next little while, half the ads you see are for that service. "Uh... but I've already signed up..."

I got ads for a mouse (similar model) after it was bought.

I think I learned in my marketing course that we (statistically) tend to look out for ads for things we have bought after the purchase.

The reason is hypothesised to be because our brain is actively seeking confirmation of previous decisions.

That said, your case most definitely was because of indiscriminate retargeting. Also I guess the effect I mentioned is more visible for bigger purchases : )

Re: Ruin My Search History

#136
post #121

This is super irresponsible to have on HN. Not funny. Especially for people who live in despot countries. Not sure if the USA counts quite yet.

Well the queries to google use https, so ISPs and government monitors shouldn't be able to see the queries. If you have malware on your computer, or if Google is giving your search history out to despot countries (I don't think they are), you might be worried.

Google doesn't do certificate pinning with HPKP. So nothing stopping a despot country from using certs signed by a valid CA. And of course there are compromised CA's. The US is just smart enough not to do this for mass collection, otherwise they'll get caught.

Re: Ruin My Search History

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would quit a job like that, unless there were seriously profound reasons for such a grotesque invasion. 1. There are proper ways to restrict activity without resorting to eavesdropping. 2. If they don't trust you enough to be responsible and use good judgement, you're probably stuck in a dead-end situation anyway. 3. In the more rare scenarios, where you might be operating live-saving or life-threatening equipment,…

Some companies in highly regulated industries intercept, and inspect all traffic purely because it's easier. Though if this raised a flag, and you showed them what link you clicked, any sane IT department would laugh and start sending the link to their friends.

Other companies (tech compnies, even) engage in ridiculous behavior like timing the minutes of your bathroom breaks, and so forth.

Call centers, data entry, tier one support.

Re: Ruin My Search History

#138
post #41
post #39

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen? IP address: * Time: 2016-06-10T00:07:58Z URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=donald%20trump It appears Google is not too happy with Donald Trump.

That happens when your IP spams Google with too many queries too quickly.

It also occurs if you cotinually tweak a single search term, for example adding more and more exclusions to try to bypass Google's 'suggestions'. I encounter it about once a month.

Re: Ruin My Search History

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.) I can happily endorse the company's public statements on this subject: personal data will be deleted within the timeframes specified (for obvious technical and that's-a-bad-idea reasons, it's not instant). Part of SRE's function is to arrange for SLAs to be met, including deletion SLAs.

does the data get sent anywhere else before it gets deleted?

Dont worry the NSA keeps a copy for you just in case.

Re: Ruin My Search History

#140
post #39

Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen? IP address: * Time: 2016-06-10T00:07:58Z URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=donald%20trump It appears Google is not too happy with Donald Trump.

I know it's googles way of preventing robotic searches but still, I wouldn't be shocked if in the future it's discovered that google was anti-trump in a way.
Post reply on HN