[LINK] Search google anonymously

[Kim Holburn]

 From slashdot:
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/10/04/a-better-way-to-hide-from-google/
http://googlesharing.net/

> A Better Way To Hide From Google
> By ANDY GREENBERG
>
> Hacker and GoogleSharing founder Moxie Marlinspike
>
> Moxie Marlinspike doesn’t believe you should trust Google. And if  
> you don’t trust Moxie Marlinspike, that’s fine, too.
>
> On Wednesday Marlinspike, a hacker and cybersecurity researcher,  
> introduced a new, even-more-private version of the GoogleSharing  
> privacy tool he launched eight months ago. That tool, a plug-in for  
> Firefox, has allowed users who are wary of Google’s data-collecting  
> practices to use the company’s search and other services without  
> revealing their activities to Google itself, mixing their identities  
> with those of the other users of Marlinspike’s service to protect  
> every user’s anonymity.
>
> Now the upgraded version of GoogleSharing pulls off another privacy  
> trick for the doubly paranoid: preventing Marlinspike or any other  
> GoogleSharing administrator from seeing user data, too.
>
> GoogleSharing works by routing a user’s traffic to Google through a  
> GoogleSharing proxy server, where it’s scrambled with other users’  
> traffic and relayed to Google’s sites. The problem until now: Even  
> as GoogleSharing has amassed 100,000 users, critics (including me)  
> have pointed out that the service simply traded one kind of personal  
> exposure for another. Although users couldn’t be tracked by Google,  
> all of their traffic remained visible to whoever was running the  
> GoogleSharing server.
>
> “The ultimate aim behind GoogleSharing is to allow you to use Google  
> services without being subjected to invasive privacy practices, but  
> users were still required to trust us,” says Marlinspike. “A lot of  
> people were suspicious of our motives.”
>
> So when Google introduced encrypted search last May, Marlinspike saw  
> an opportunity to solve that trust problem. Now that Google can  
> accept encrypted search terms, he’s set GoogleSharing to scramble  
> its queries and pass on the data in encrypted form. That means  
> whoever is running the GoogleSharing server can see only identifying  
> details like a user’s IP address, not the content of his or her  
> online activities. And as has always been the case with  
> GoogleSharing, Google can see only a user’s activities, not his or  
> her identifying details. “Neither one of us gets to see the complete  
> picture,” Marlinspike says.
>


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
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