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posted by Cactus on Wednesday February 26 2014, @05:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't dept.

Fluffeh writes:

According to TorrentFreak, Google is downranking The Pirate Bay's website in its search results for a wide variety of queries, some of which are not linked to copyright-infringing content. Interestingly, the change mostly seems to affect TPB results via the Google.com domain, not other variants such as Google.ca and Google.co.uk.

It also seems that Google may only be downranking searches that are explicitly looking for copyright-infringing content, not searches that are simply looking for The Pirate Bay itself. It will be interesting to see whether this is a backhanded effort to appease the media companies, or a taste of things to come to all the Google domains.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by dilbert on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:07PM

    by dilbert (444) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:07PM (#7436)
    I'm curious how often google manipulates the search results that the public isn't aware of. I suspect it's more than we might think, and I'm not just talking about the filter bubble [dontbubble.us].

    I try to use competing search engines and avoid google as much as possible. Startpage/ixquick/duckduckgo all see queries from me.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:10PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:10PM (#7439)

    Given that your search engine decides what you see and don't see, you're wise for using more than one.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by darnkitten on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:38PM

    by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:38PM (#7460)

    I try to use competing search engines and avoid google as much as possible. Startpage/ixquick/duckduckgo all see queries from me.

    Agreed.

    Opening a private tab [mozilla.org] before you start the search is also a good idea, if your browser supports it.

    • (Score: 1) by bucc5062 on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:56PM

      by bucc5062 (699) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:56PM (#7471)
      While I did add it to my FF browser, I do not see how this stops Google from tracking/recording your searches. PRivate Tab states in part "While this computer won't have a record of your browsing history, your internet service provider or employer can still track the pages you visit.". I kills your path, but not what you provide so google still gets your data. What did I miss?
      --
      The more things change, the more they look the same
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by dilbert on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:32PM

      by dilbert (444) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:32PM (#7489)

      I use TOR for about 90% of my web browsing, and rotate search engines (avoiding google except when I can't find what I need elsewhere). When I use a regular browser (not TOR), I use noscript, betterprivacy, ghostery, https everywhere, and adblock edge. EFF's Panopticlick shows my browser fingerprint as fairly common.

      I'm extreme so I take it one step further: I do all of the above inside a VirtualBox VM which I refresh back to a pristine state (via snapshot) every so often which prevents any unknown (to me) tracking methods to work across browsing sessions.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:45PM (#7501)
        Where's the +1 Paranoid option?!
      • (Score: 1) by metamonkey on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:13PM

        by metamonkey (3174) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:13PM (#7527)

        Holy shit man. Are you like an IRL ninja or secret agent or something?

        --
        Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by SMI on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:37PM

        by SMI (333) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:37PM (#7549)

        I see your NoScript, BetterPrivacy, httpsEverywhere, and AdBlock, and raise you RequestPolicy, ModifyHeaders, Disconnect.me, and SecretAgent.

        Not as much of a fan as Ghostery, though. Also, wise move with the VM.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by darnkitten on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:11PM

          by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:11PM (#7565)

          Hey...slightly offtopic, but--I used to use HttpsEverywhere on shared computers (I run a small library), but had to disable, as I was getting certificate error messages from popular email and social networking sites (ie., Google and facebook). These would require me to reset the cert8 file to resolve. Do you know if that is still happening?

          HttpsEverywhere seems such an obvious fit for public computers, but having to fix them 2-3 times a week got real old real fast.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by SMI on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:34PM

            by SMI (333) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:34PM (#7574)

            I can't speak re: popular email and social networking sites (ie., Google and Facepalm), as I avoid them like the plague, but I can tell you that I've never had any problems with HttpsEverywhere. If your issues were more than a few months ago, maybe try again? I doubt that such an issue would be allowed to simmer very long...

            Furthermore, you might look into changing rulesets [eff.org].

            • (Score: 1) by darnkitten on Friday February 28 2014, @03:06AM

              by darnkitten (1912) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:06AM (#8232)

              Thanks. It has been a while. I'll have to test it on one or two of the machines and see what happens.

              I can't speak re: popular email and social networking sites (ie., Google and Facepalm), as I avoid them like the plague...

              Me too, but most of the patrons who come in to use the public computers are just there to use FB or other social sites. I never see the problems until the patrons trigger them.

              • (Score: 2) by SMI on Friday February 28 2014, @03:13AM

                by SMI (333) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:13AM (#8237)

                "I never see the problems until the patrons trigger them."

                I understand completely.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by spxero on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:16PM

        by spxero (3061) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:16PM (#7587)

        Don't forget to add Self-Distructing Cookies to your addon list!

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by philovivero on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:44AM

        by philovivero (3410) on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:44AM (#7826)

        This is not particularly useful.

        What we need is for someone to generate such a VM image and distribute it so that all that crazy stuff you mentioned (about 1/3 of which I haven't even heard of) is already set up and functional.

        The 2/3 of that I've heard of I think it would take me weeks to be 100% sure I've set them up properly and test them to be sure there isn't some trivial mistake I made that makes me uniquely identifiable.

        • (Score: 2) by SMI on Thursday February 27 2014, @05:29PM

          by SMI (333) on Thursday February 27 2014, @05:29PM (#8060)

          Useful is subjective.

          If you're looking for an image to get started with, I would recommend either Tails [boum.org] or Liberte Linux [dee.su]. First thing to be aware of is that putting either one on optical media is the safest method.

          Additionally, it's important to note that these, like the FF add-ons previously referred to, are just tools. A hammer is useless to someone who doesn't know what it is or what it can do. What we all really need is comprehension of how the modern internet is designed, so that we can all individually make informed choices regarding what information we want to expose, as well as which sites and services we want our computers to interact with. The first thing to understand about security in any context is that it is an on-going process, not an end in itself.

          Lastly, don't fault yourself or get discouraged because of the learning curve. We all have to start somewhere.

      • (Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:05PM

        by GeminiDomino (661) on Thursday February 27 2014, @06:05PM (#8070)

        I've got pretty much the same set of extensions, except that I use RequestPolicy along with NS and ABE, and I don't use Ghostery (it murders performance is one reason, this [businesswire.com] is another). I switched to Disconnect after that.

        Let me ask you: what do you run in that VM? I've thought for awhile it might be useful to have a small, lightweight OS just for tasks like full-featured browsing, rather than running a full Xubuntu install just to surf the web without too much hassle.

        --
        "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
        • (Score: 1) by dilbert on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:36PM

          by dilbert (444) on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:36PM (#8110)

          FYI, Ghostery does let you opt out of the data collection but I'm always looking for more effective/freedom respecting tools. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have to check out Disconnect (+1 over Ghostery for being open source).

          The VM is running Mint 16 'Petra'. Once everything is properly configured, the snapshot can be in a powered off/on state depending on preference. A snapshot in an 'on' state will result in a larger snapshot size as it includes the contents of the VM's RAM while a snapshot in an 'off' state will be smaller but require the VM to boot each use.

          The entire process takes only a few seconds per browsing session, which is a small inconvenience for a significant increase in privacy.

  • (Score: 1) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:54PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:54PM (#8019)

    Oh hey, it looks like Google finally fixed their weird behavior where when I searched on "QC", the first result was Questionable Content but I'm Feeling Lucky-ing it took me to some marketing page instead. Nice.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"