http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:02:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/15/protect-your-privacy-from-google-adsenses-new-behavioral-ads/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/15/protect-your-privacy-from-google-adsenses-new-behavioral-ads/#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:01:36 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11223 Google recently launched behavioral targeted ads for AdSense. This means AdSense displays adverts not only on the context of the webpage, but on the context of your browsing history. The aim is to provide more relevant and efficient adverts, but tracking cookies being used across hundreds of thousands of websites raises obvious privacy issues, as Google can use this information to log website you have been on.

Usually, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is very critical of big corporations who intrude on people’s privacy, but their criticism was not very harsh. Why? Because Google has developed a web browser plug-in that permits users to opt-out of this scheme.

The plug-in is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox and modifications to browser preferences in Chrome and Safari also allow people to opt-out. Google also maintains an ‘Ad Preferences Manager‘ which allows this tracking cookie to be disabled until the next time cookies are wiped.

There are several reasons to disable these cookies. Firstly, you may not entrust Google with your details. Secondly, adverts based on past browsing may be displayed to other users of the computer… not perfect if, for example, you were buying a present for a family member and they are suddenly swarmed with advertisements about it!

Most tracking cookies can be disabled if you modify browser settings. In Firefox, for example, in Preferences>Privacy, you can refuse to ‘accept third party cookies’.

Tags: Adsense, advertising, behavioral ads, cookies, doubleclick, firefox, Google, google adsense, internet-explorer, privacy, protect privacy, safety, Security, tracking cookies

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/15/protect-your-privacy-from-google-adsenses-new-behavioral-ads/feed/ 17 http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/02/web-of-trust-collaborative-online-security/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/02/web-of-trust-collaborative-online-security/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:30:58 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=8669 Most systems which warn of unsafe websites, like OpenDNS and Google, work in mysterious, non-transparent ways and websites are often deemed as unsafe for reasons other than safety. Web of Trust is a Firefox extension which rates the safety of websites based on ratings received by other users of the plug-in.

Users rate websites on their ‘Trustworthiness’, ‘Vendor reliability’, ‘Privacy’ and ‘Child Safety’. Information about websites is also gathered from Compete, comments by users and through links from reliable sources (such as Digg, Lifehacker, Open Directory Project and Wikipedia).

Web of Trust sits alongside your navigation buttons, ensuring it has your attention, and should a website be cause for concern the button will change colour. Information is also integrated in webmail and search results, to ensure you won’t stumble across an unsafe website.

It currently has information regarding of about 21,000,000 websites based on feedback from the extension’s users. It can also be used as parental control, blocking children from websites not suitable for kids.

The website has flaws. It relies on a user spotting a phishing site before someone falls prey to it and naturally, intelligent scammers could trick it through rating their own site. Then again, I imagine this would rarely happen and even when it does, one would expect it to be quickly rectified.

Tags: anti-phising, firefox, firefox-extension, firefox-extensions, online safety, parental control, phishing, safety, Security, web of trust, wot

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