Google Personalizes Search Results Even When You're Logged Out, a DuckDuckGo Study Finds (theverge.com) 114
According to a new study conducted by Google competitor DuckDuckGo, it does not seem possible to avoid personalization when using Google search, even by logging out of your Google account and using the private browsing "incognito" mode. From a report: DuckDuckGo conducted the study in June of this year, at the height of the US midterm election season. It did so with the ostensible goal of confirming whether Google's search results exacerbate ideological bubbles by feeding you only information you've signaled you want to consume via past behavior and the data collected about you. It's not clear whether that question can be reliably answered with these findings, and it's also obvious DuckDuckGo is a biased source with something to gain by pointing out how flawed Google's approach may be. But the study's findings are nonetheless interesting because they highlight just how much variance there are in Google search results, even when controlling for factors like location.
Just use someone else's computer (Score:3, Funny)
Obvious solution: When you need to buy drugs, hire an assassin, or process your bitcoin payment from the Russian FSB, just use someone else's computer. I use my cubie-mate's while he is taking a toilet break.
Another option is to use the terminals at the public library. Just watch out for the security cameras.
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What is a cubie-mate?
Someone with whom you share a cubicle when your employer is too cheap to provide each employee their own.
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What is a cubicle? :-)
I have never seen one in use in Denmark.
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I have never seen one in use in Denmark.
Then how do Danish CEOs pump up the value of their stock options with short term cost cutting?
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And further to Bill's "just use another computer" comment...
Yesterday I got slow rolled on YouTube, probably for posting too many comments. As it was the first time it happened to me, I wanted to study it a bit.
I was curious if my most recent comments had been shadow banned so I went on other computers in the house.
We are talking about computers I never log in to, and where the other users are not logged in either.
So I brought up 3 or 4 of the channels I had been commenting on most recently. On two diffe
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I'll bet you didn't read my full comment.
DIFFERENT computer, unrelated to me.
Nobody logged in on it (on YouTube).
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DIFFERENT computer, unrelated to me.
Nobody logged in on it (on YouTube).
But still in the same house, and connected to the same router, right?
Most likely they are tracking you by your IP address.
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Their entire business model is built on screwing over user privacy, and at the end of the day, they won't be able to do anything other than that. There is no user advocacy, privacy, nor security because of that and the fact that they HAVE to place those things a distant second to profitability.
And that is precisely why Europe has the GDPR, to create an actual financial incentive not to screw over users.
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Who said they aren't using cookies (or any other identification techniques)? The headline merely mentions not being logged in. You can be logged out and still receive cookies and whatnot.
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Using the ISP?
The IP, computer type can change. The cookies, super cookies get removed. Habits and interests span days, months, years.
Google is poorly managed? What do you think? (Score:2)
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My observation: In recent years, Google has been, more and more, poorly managed.
You should check the GOOG chart on NASDAQ. Companies are managed to maximize profit, not privacy.
What will be Google's long-term results? (Score:2)
Yes, but what will be the long-term results?
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Yes, but what will be the long-term results?
This. [theatlantic.com]
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Yes, but what will be the long-term results?
This. [theatlantic.com]
Re: Google is poorly managed? What do you think? (Score:2)
I can't speak to their management practices. But certainly the quality of their consumer-facing software has gone to shit. Search, Gmail, Maps - all of them worked better a few years ago than today.
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone's watching, listening, and logging all the time. It's creepy. .. anywhere, ever.
The weirdest example to date: Just this Saturday, I came across a meme on the Memedroid app on my tablet, about a nerdy hoodie that looks like knight's armor. Some comments were pro, some con. I moved on to the next meme.
An hour later, I went downstairs, on my PC, check in on Facebook.. guess what an ad for shows up. That hoodie.. that I had never seen before that meme, and certainly never searched for
WTF? I have FB installed on the tablet but it wasn't actively running. That shit is spooky. Neither that meme nor in the comments for it was a link, it was just a picture of the stupid thing, and a joke. AI ?
I cannot bring myself to believe that was pure coincidence. It's one example of many, but just the most egregious.
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"I have FB installed on the tablet but it wasn't actively running." Yeah, it was.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/facebook-track-browsing-history-california-lawsuit
https://thenextweb.com/google/2018/08/14/google-is-tracking-your-every-move-even-when-you-tell-it-to-stop-heres-how-to-fix-it/
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Can't speak to what that one does, but ad networks pull cookies and do other fingerprinting. So Facebook wasn't open, but an ad network cookie was there, so it could get your ID and feed it into the network. Boom, ad can now connect to you all over the place.
It's super creepy.
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That's nothing. One day I was just thinking about something that I not normally think about. Later that day I looked up the YouTube main page and there was a movie about what I thought about in the Recommended section.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. One day I was just thinking about something that I not normally think about. Later that day I looked up the YouTube main page and there was a movie about what I thought about in the Recommended section.
Oh yeah? That's nothing [dilbert.com] ... YouTube shows me things even before I think about them!
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That's nothing ... YouTube shows me things even before I think about them!
That's nothing! YouTube shows other people things way before I have ever thought about them!
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I'll tell you what's creepy. There's a certain restaurant that I frequent in LA. I'm typically out there a couple of weeks every year doing some work. I've never given that restaurant any personal information. Ever.
A couple of days ago I got an email from them, and they've added me to their email list. I'm still not sure how.
Re: Not surprising (Score:2)
I thought I always used cash.
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I saw no meme and in my experience, that hoodie absolutely flooded the internet last week, for some reason. So it's still possible that it's a coincidence.
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I've had an in-person voice conversation with a friend discussing a moderately unknown religious guru. The next day I started seeing ads for their retreat...
Colocation based advertising. You were near the guru location (probably close to an advertised date time and location or an appointment on someones google calaneder ) therefore googles ad network assumed you were interested in the guru.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Funny)
It happens on this site, too.
I look at one story, and most of the posts are trolls about APK, immanent Trump incarceration, and giant swastikas.
Then I open an article on a completely different topic, and what do I see? The very same posts about APK, immanent Trump incarceration, and giant swastikas.
It's downright creepy.
They even do this down to the micro-level, randomly inserting "â(TM)" into people's posts on my browser, no matter what the topic. I assume that they're targeted promotions for this trademarked "â" product. I don't know where they got the idea that I was interested in â.
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Maybe it's Canadian, â?
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Well..the first line in my post was "they're always watching, listening".. and what I meant by "actively" running was that the app was not launched.. I know that it runs in the background to supposedly deliver messages and notifications, but listens as well.
The thing I found really, really creepy here though is that it identified this hoodie strictly by an image of it on a different app (that I paid for and is not supposed to use ads); I did not write about the hoodie, mention it by name, or see a link to
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If an app is free, then you're the product. Free apps tend to want more access than they need, for that reason.
I can't bring myself to believe that was pure coincidence either. Try visual search on bing for an example of how this technology works to match images with products. Also keywords.
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There is a free version of the app, but I use the paid ad-less version (it was only like $2 or $3 and got rid of the ads).
It could still be that the developers just pass everything along to people like Facebook and other 3rd parties, regardless.. I'd rather that, frankly, to having my screen monitored 24/7 regardless of what app I'm using just because I've installed FB on the tablet. (And I only use it on the tablet very rarely).
Monitoring me to try and sell me crap is one level; it's a little creepy but
Re: Not surprising (Score:2)
"what I'm really concerned about is, when (not if) the government decides to join the party."
How do you think Faceboot and Big Brother Google make all their money? Selling ADS? Yeah, right......
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Yes it was. Most likely your app was a webview that displayed a website complete with Google +1 and Facebook Like buttons.
Those buttons are your trackers.
Me Three (Score:2)
1) Once, I Google-searched some work-related part using my work desktop PC, and that night, back before I blocked ads on all my machines, an ad for that part showed up on my home machine even though I didn't do the same search at home.
2) I once looked unsuccessfully for third-party ink cartridge refills for my 20+ year old Epson inkjet printer, since Epson stopped making them. A couple of days later, I got an expensive, glossy, multi-page ad in snail
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If you install an app, and give it access to your browsing history, it is storing all of it.
If you install an app, and give it access to your microphone, it is listening at all times and telling somebody.
If you install an app, and give it access to your location, it is tracking all your movements and selling them to a company that correlates it with all your other data, and then sells it to everybody.
It is not a coincidence, it is the natural result of clicking "yes" when asked to share your browser history
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You're not getting it. Memedroid is an app, but even if it had access to my browsing history, I didn't browse to this hoodie. There was no "Browse history" to speak of. It was simply a picture of one as part of a meme on this app. As I stated, no URLs, links, or mentions by exact product name were referenced.
Re:Why woul you expect logging out to change thing (Score:4, Informative)
I've never had a Google account, and I haven't accepted Google cookies in about 5 years. I wonder if I get the default results.
I would be astonished if you did. The whole point of this is that you're still being tracked even if you log out or use browser modes which don't send prior-established cookies.
I never use ggogle search while logged in... (Score:2)
Common knowledge (Score:2)
I knew that for at least a year, just from experience. I thought it was common knowledge.
It's rather obvious if you use incognito mode (Score:5, Interesting)
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Isn't that a bit of an overkill? I can think of a number of alternative options:
- running multiple profiles for different activities, i.e., Firefox/mail profile and Firefox/browsing profile
- running different browsers for different activities, i.e., Firefox for the email, Chromium for incognito browsing
- running different browsers/activities as different users, i.e. "sudo -u mail_only firefox ww
Re: It's rather obvious if you use incognito mode (Score:2)
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I don't believe it because DDG said it, I believe it because I have done my own experiments and verified it myself.
So have plenty of others. Google's tracking behavior is no longer up for debate.
Probabilistic demographic targeting (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, search results can change by location, such as the inclusion of local news articles. We controlled for this factor by checking all links by hand for this possibility, comparing them to the city and state of the volunteer. We saw very few local links for gun control (1 organic link, 1 news infobox link) and immigration (0), though more for vaccinations (15 organic links, 4 news infobox links).
To control for these local links, we replaced all of them with the same placeholder — localdomain.com for organic links and "Local Source" for infoboxes — in all of our analysis. This adjustment means two users whose results only differed by a different local domain in the same slot would not count as different. Interestingly, this adjustment didn't affect overall variation significantly.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really control for location, because the targeting doesn't work the way they think it does. Google doesn't just include local news stories, but, even for (especially for?) logged out users, they apply targeting based on what your local demographics are like and the search history results of your neighbors. Live in a big city? Even if you're logged out, you'll get a different set of results than if you live in a small rural town. This is true even with a completely wiped history or brand new computer. The justification is that you probably have many similarities with people around you... if they're all searching for snow blowers because there's a storm coming, you probably are interested in one too. It's not even close to 100% accurate, but it's not inaccurate either - it's the same basis used for decades for selecting markets for television commercials, too: using a small group of consumers for whom they have highly accurate information, they extrapolate out to the larger market.
Does this mean you're not really logged out, and Google is secretly tracking you? No, no more than you're being tracked when some broadcaster decides to show certain commercials during a sitcom as opposed to others. They're just making an educated case, and while the result looks the same - pseudo-personalized content - the process is different.
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Too much of a good thing is bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Online news sucks specifically because it is excessively tailored for you.
One of the lost pleasures of 50 years ago is reading the paper; modern papers are ghosts of their former selves. A newspaper was a carefully curated collection of informative articles designed to appeal to a broad variety of people in a geographic area. Yes, they had ideological focuses, but narrow that focus too far and circulation would drop. Because newspapers desired the largest possible audience within a restricted geographic area, items in them had to stand up to critical scrutiny from a number of points of view.
Since there were no smartphones, when you had a little down time you'd read a bit further into the paper until you were scraping the bottom of the barrel. I'd start with the front page, go to the science section and work my way down until I was reading the sports page. And when you finished reading you'd be just a tiny bit different than when you started, because you'd been exposed to unfamiliar issues and viewpoints.
That feeling of having your mind expanded is what I miss. You can spend a few hours reading online news but when you're done you won't be any different than when you started. While you're reading you may be entertained, provoked, and pandered to, but in the end the algorithm isn't there to inform you. It's there to pigeonhole you so you can be bundled for sale.
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Online news sucks specifically because it is excessively tailored for you.
That's a blanket statement that doesn't apply to everyone and in all situations. If you had said "corporate curated newsfeeds", you'd have pretty much nailed it.
I do mostly online news. But I do it with an RSS feed that pulls in a fairly diverse set of news websites, including local news. I've curated political, science, and tech news sections, and I've tried to do my due diligence and put a good bit of diversity in there, provided that the sites in question are actually generally factual and truthful.
What
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Your local newspaper is tailored to you, so is all your historic news, simply because you have a lot in common with people living around you
the only thing that has changed is how tightly focused this is - turning off cookies stops the tight focus and they can only tailor content to you based on context ...
I hear about this... but I just don't see it... (Score:2)
I have people I know who LIKE walking out of a restaurant and being asked to fill out a survey. They buy into the tracking / convenience BS. I don't understand it at all, it would drive me nuts. But honestly I don't see it very often at all. Here is my setup:
1. Home PC I run Linux (Devuan), and use PaleMoon. Yes, I use google as my search, but I am not logged into my google account on my PC.
2. Android phone, logged into my google account, and I get my gmail there. I only use that email for "official"
Best thing I've read on the internet in a while (Score:2)
It's not clear whether that question can be reliably answered with these findings, and it's also obvious DuckDuckGo is a biased source with something to gain by pointing out how flawed Google's approach may be.
Thanks for being open to criticism and openly acknowledging faults/bias.
DO NOT TRUST DUCKDUCKGO (Score:1)
The DuckDuckGo owner goes around *constantly* bashing Google, sometimes dishonestly, in every single interview he gives. I mean *every* interview. There's no such thing as DuckDuckGo doing a "study" of Google.
Intrus-neeto! Mode (Score:2)
Incognito mode just guaranteed Google won't spy on you. It doesn't mean the web site isn't sending what you click on and your IP to an advertising preferences database (Google, Amazon, facebook), and Google is smarmy because their own sites do this even though you are in incognito mode and they know it.