Stop Others From Snooping on your Online Activities

Written by Soumen Halder on 1 Jan, 2009 Under Internet

Someone is always spying on your activities everyday. It may be your boss, who needs to know whether you are opting another job or your Internet service provider (ISP) tracking your queries to sell them to analytics’ giants. Whatever be the reason, its you who are getting mobbed everyday. And you don’t know it. Get to know how to hide yourself from those voyeurs.

Search data retention is a major issue these days. While some backs its necessity for secured & relevant search, others opposes it for its privacy violation. You may refer Washingtonpost Journal if wish to know about the debate more or else skip it to know how you can prevent it.

You may adopt all the ten methods or you may use a specific one that works best for you.

1. Mask Your Google Searches : Whenever you search something on Google or any popular search engines they append your search without encrypting it i.e when you search “dotnet jobs” the url showing the search page is like “http://www.google.com/search?q=dotnet+jobs” and that makes data collection pretty easy. Now there is a way to mask the Google, provided indirectly by Google itself.
The website, www.americanlandmarkfence.com is hosted on the same server with Google. You cannot feel a single difference unless you look into your browser address bar. Also the name is indistinct to the voyeurs.

2. Don’t Allow Google to Store Cookies : You have to enable cookie rejection for not only google but also for google.co.in(for INDIA) or google.co.uk(for England) also as google redirects you to that page.

IE: Click Tools->Internet Options->Privacy->Sites
Firefox: Click Tool->Options->Privacy->Cookies->Exceptions

Now add the site url’s you want to reject cookies.
NB:Remember personalized search history will not be effective in these cases. You may also have to type your username & password to login to your account as you will not be automatically logged in.

3. Erase The Cookies With Cookie Cleaners : You can clean those cookies using CCleaner which is completely free. Get it here. Or you may use Advanced Track Eraser. Download it here.

4. Use Scandoo : Scandoo is a wonderful wrapper around the search engines that remains hidden from the end user & you would feel like searching in the search engine itself. It hides your original IP address from the search engines. Try it or download the Scandoo IE Toolbar.

5. Download HideMyIp Software : If you are using static IP address then can use it to hide your IP address from the search engines. It can be configured to change your IP address every minute. Download it here.

6. Download Customize Google addon for Firefox : To experience better Googling download & install he Customize Google addon. It removes ads from your search page, it filters your search results & also disable click tracking which is very vital in case of your secrecy. Download it here.

7. Block the Google Analytics Cookie : As you have the Customize Google you can avoid the nefarious google-analytics cookie that make a simple URL look heavy & most of all tracks your activity. Though it is not that malicious you can reject it too by following the steps (In Mozilla Firefox):

1. Firefox -> Tools -> Customize Google Options -> Privacy
2. Now select the option shown :

8. Use Dogpile Search : Use this search in order to avoid cookies from/to the search engines. It searches Yahoo, Google & MSN simultaneously. You can find it here.

9. Use Search Engines That Don’t Retain Your Search Data : There are some search engines that don’t reatin your search queries for more than 48 hours. In our case this is a safer search. Examples are Clusty.com & Ixquick.com.

10. Try Scroogle Google Scraper : Finally, you can try Scroogle Google Scrapper & search Google & Yahoo, without getting your search query