Cookies. We have a love hate relationship with them. They track what we do and report all kinds of information back to the site that generated them — and to third parties as well, in many cases. But they also often provide a better user experience, keeping track of our preferences and removing small annoyances like having to sign in to a website every single time we open it up. Unfortunately, as is the case with most things on the internet regarding your privacy and security, the only completely effective way to protect yourself is to simply turn the potential problem off. The only problem with this course of action is that turning off cookies also has the effect of making a huge part of the web practically unusable.
So what to do about it? Well, if you use Google Chrome, try out Disconnect.
Disconnect, which was created by a former Google employee, is a Google Chrome Extension that helps you to keep your personal data safe while still maintaining the ability to work effectively with sites like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and others. You may run into a few issues now and again, but overall, the experience is fairly seamless. All you need to do is install the Disconnect extension in your Google Chrome browser, make sure the extension is turned on, then watch as the tally of daily attempted intrusions upon your privacy climbs. The basic functionality, and much of the more advanced uses, of the webapps should work without problems, helping you to do what you like, and search for what you like, without passing along any personally identifiable data. If you have need to unblock a service, say to do something like play Facebook games, it’s a simple matter of a click on the extension’s dropdown menu (which includes Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Yahoo, and Google).
Disconnect is open source software. Download it for Google Chrome here.
Disconnect for Chrome Disables Third-Party Tracking While Keeping Webapps Operational [Lifehacker]
Google Turns On the Torrent Censor
In December of 2010, Google announced that it was planning to make “copyright work better online.” One of those steps was to remove “terms that are closely associated with piracy” from autocompletes, making it slightly more difficult for those looking for ways to find less than legit files to use their service. It seems that Google has made good on its promise, removing several search terms — and portions of search terms — from both autocomplete and Google Instant.
While some may cheer this move on Google’s part, there are several parties who are finding this censorship to be unfair. 40Tech has taken an anti-piracy stance on more than one occasion, but we are also not fans of censorship. Companies like RapidShare, Megaupload, and BitTorrent are most definitely used by those participating in shady file-sharing, but they are also used for legitimate, and often useful, purposes, yet these sites can no longer be found via Google’s autocomplete or Instant features. Is it fair that they be given selective treatment when, as a representative of RapidShare states: “A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s?”
The selection of banned terms seems to be arbitrary, as not all well-known torrent sites are affected — you can still find The Pirate Bay, for instance. Anything using the search term “torr,” however, has been removed, along with several other terms and bits of terms. This is unfortunate for anyone doing some quick research on the torr symbol (a non-SI unit of pressure), or the high-IQ society Torr.org, or Torr the thin film and nanotechnology company, or anyone with the last name of Torr — which shows that Google’s approach is somewhat less than perfect.
Image from TorrentFreak
At this point, only autocomplete and Instant are affected. You can still find whatever you might be looking for when you press enter — but good luck if you are looking for something legitimate that incorporates one of Google’s banned terms and are hoping for some suggested results.
What do you think of Google’s approach here? Is it a good thing — or is it yet another form of relatively pointless censorship? Will making torrents a little bit harder to search for on Google actually have any impact on piracy at all? Let us know in the comments.