In 2008, Google said there’s no such thing as complete privacy. You’re being tracked all over the web by their AdSense ads, by sites that use Google Analytics and – probably the most important – their search engine. But Google Search isn’t the only search engine that tracks your behavior. Concerned about your privacy? In this article, we’ll show you how you can get rid of click tracking in search engines.
The secret redirect
Whenever you click a link in Google Search, your click is redirected through a secret URL. If the site you’re going to is http://www.cybernetnews.com/, Google will do a secret redirect through a URL that looks similar to http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.cybernetnews.com/. In some cases, you can reveal the secret redirect by right-clicking on a linked search result. If that doesn’t work, your last resort is an HTTP sniffer.
There are several Firefox add-ons that claim to get rid of Google Search’s click tracking. CustomizeGoogle is one of them. Among other tweaks, it promises to remove click tracking and disable Google Analytics cookies. If you just want the anti-tracking feature without the bells and whistles, there’s a Greasemonkey script you can download called Google Tracking B-Gone. To use Greasemonkey scripts, you need to install the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. Also, if you use an international version of Google such as google.co.uk, you have to change the script’s URL range from http://*.google.com/* to http://*.google.*/* to ensure that the script is allowed to operate on your local Google site.
Yahoo
Unlike Google’s redirect, the one Yahoo uses is always easy to find. Right-click on a link and look at your status bar to reveal an intimidating garglemesh of strange characters originating from rds.yahoo.com. You can get rid of that by installing this Greasemonkey script. However, my HTTP sniffer revealed that Yahoo does some additional click tracking from a URL that starts with http://search.yahoo.com/ra/click?. To disable this, add http://search.yahoo.com/ra/click?* as a filter to Adblock Plus.
Bing
Bing seems to have a very subtle click tracking mechanism. The only fishy thing Bing does is call some URL’s that start with http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/ whenever you click a search result. Again, Adblock Plus can help you deal with this if you add http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/* to its filter list. Turning off JavaScript on bing.com seems to help too.
Shutting off the HTTP referrer
Although the tips listed above can help you stop search engines from tracking your clicks, it does not keep websites from gathering information about your web search. This is done through the HTTP referrer. Any page on the web can retrieve information on how you stumbled upon it, i.e. which URL referred to their web page.
The referrer is also known to be used by site owners to retrieve information about the search engine you used and what your search query was. On rare occasions, some sites alter themselves if you found them through web search. For example, I’ve seen sites display “Welcome, Googler!”-esque messages and even sites that highlight your Google search terms on the page you landed on. Although this rather creepy practice is not widespread, it just shows how much a site really knows about you.
Fortunately, you can disable the sending of the HTTP referrer to the websites you visit. While it is possible to disable the HTTP referrer entirely in Firefox’s about:config, this can break certain functionality on some sites. There’s a Firefox add-on called RefControl that does away with this issue by allowing you to add exceptions for sites that need the referrer.
Other browsers
It is possible to use the Google Tracking B-Gone and Yahoo Click-Tracking Disabler scripts in other browsers. So if you’re really serious about extending your tinfoil hat protection to other browsers, you can check out these resources:
- Internet Explorer: Greasemonkey for IE
- Opera: How To: Greasemonkey in Opera
- Safari: GreaseKit
- Chrome: Greasemetal
To disable the HTTP referrer, follow these instructions:
- IE/Opera: How do I Disable Sending Referrers?
- Safari: Is there a way to disable header referrals in Safari?
- Chrome: currently really difficult
Since I’ve only tested this with Firefox, I cannot guarantee that the content from these resources is accurate.
Google only adds that URL if you have the Web History feature enabled in your settings, which is designed to track your clicks for your own future reference.
You are making scripts and workarounds for features you have enabled.
Not true. I used a clean Firefox install in this article so I wasn’t logged in to Google’s services.
After your comment, I also tried searching Google while logged in with Web History disabled. The tracking URL still appeared in my HTTP sniffer.
While I was a longtime, faithful user of CustomizeGoogle[customizegoogle.com] it hasn’t been updated almost a year (to the day).
Instead, I’ve found a project that has taken over where it left off, called OptimizeGoogle [optimizegoogle.sourceforge.net] It does everything that CustomizeGoogle did, but has been updated to reflect changes in Google. I would hope and imagine that it will only improve from here.
Wow it’s working man, i installed Greasemonkey add on and it is working fine… thanks
Not a single mention of No-Script? WTF kind of n00b are you?
There’s a good reason I didn’t mention NoScript. While using NoScript to disable Google’s JavaScripts seems to work fine, it has some very annoying side effects. For example, Google Reader and possibly even Gmail will stop functioning if you use NoScript on google.com.
The Greasemonkey scripts do what NoScript could have done, without the side effects.
What about No-Script?
Sorry, my post had disappeared
Who is this Pieter? I was thinking, wasn’t Ryan not overly concerned with anonymous tech usage monitoring.
A couple of years ago, I was invited by Ryan to write for CyberNet whenever I came up with something I wanted to write about. My contributions were limited to a few articles a year but recently I started coming up with more ideas. None of my articles appear on the site without Ryan’s seal of approval.
Oh, that’s cool
This is a very helpful article. Thanks for sharing this.
Paranoid much? Unless you’re doing something shady or you are a conspiracy theorist you have nothing to fear.
Google isn’t spying on you or stealing your identity, people. The data collected is used for all kinds of completely harmless (and useful) purposes – Google History, ranking, web trends (all of the web, not just you), etc.
Disabling referrer can cause all sorts of strange and annoying problems as well. A lot of sites use referrals to get stuff done and without them simply won’t work or won’t get you what you expected. In addition, a lot of affiliate networks use that information to pay people and to bill their clients.
Authority deference much?
It’s not just about whether they are watching or not.
Computer defenses are constantly being infiltrated and circumvented in a never ending game of leap frog. And not all governments would shy away from abusing tracking technologies.
Knowing what the exposures are is half the battle — having good tools to deal with them is the other.
Besides, do you really want *your* tracking data to be collected and sold among interested parties? Including governments? (yours isn’t the only one to worry about)
[eff.org]
G
Thank you for the excellent article! This has been very helpful. I followed all your suggestions (regarding the Google hack, though, people who want to be protected from both Google link-tracking and Google Analytics but don’t need the extra features in CustomizeGoogle or OptimizeGoogle could do what I’ve gone: block Google Analytics in the Firefox add-on NoScript ([addons.mozilla.org]) and then add the Greasemonkey Google Tracking B-Gone script you suggested in the article. I think that should work).
I should also mention that I have google.com allowed in No Script, so my functionality on Google is not impaired.
[scroogle.org] is a google scraper int crumble the cookie and proxie your ip address. also in shttp and search window option.
I simply use an addon in Firefox ‘Ghost’ its an amazing addon and shows all the tracking. So simple to use
Wow… even with cookie, script and web beacon filters in place, the amount of tracking this add-on found was enormous. I might write about it someday soon. Thanks for the tip, Tony!
This is a nice tips…will surely give a try…
Thanks
Abhishek
[iceinfotech.com]