Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How to stop Google from tracking you?

Cyborg21

Cyborg21

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 2, 2013
332
0
Hello! First of all sorry for my bad english. So we all know that Google wants our personal information and they are everywhere, Google search, google ads, gmail. Is just not using Google products will stop them or can they still get information from Google ads on websites? Thank you :)
 
From my days of DOD work, we would only assume the computer could not be tracked or hacked when we unplugged it from the wall and locked it in a secure room.
 
Cyborg21 said:
Hello! First of all sorry for my bad english. So we all know that Google wants our personal information and they are everywhere, Google search, google ads, gmail. Is just not using Google products will stop them or can they still get information from Google ads on websites? Thank you :)
Click to expand...

As all that data is being sent by you to their server I dont see how you could hide or mask it.

Mega has an encryption that even the people who own the servers cant break and only the user can access, but the owner of that service is in trial with the US government and gonna be shut down soon because they want to see all.
 
Oh, wouldn't a free internet good? Imagine we wouldn't tracked by companies like Google, Yahoo etc. I mean, yes there should be rules in internet but all those personal data companies are too much.
 
I'm using Ghostery, TrackMeNot and Startpage as search engine (which uses Google search results)
 
In short: unplug your ethernet cord.

Ghostery and Epic Browser will certainly protect you from Google (assuming you avoid all Google services, including YouTube). But in reality you are just trading tracking by Google for slightly-less tracking by Ghostery/Epic. So I guess if your end goal is to prevent only Google from tracking you, then one of those two would work.

The best option to stay as anonymous as possible is to use an onion network, such as Tor. But prepare yourself for a slow internet.
 
Startpage is a good replacement for Google. I use it all the time. NoScript can block trackers pretty well. Of course, nothing stops Google from tracking you when you use their servers, so try to cut down on it as much as possible.
 
556fmjoe said:
Startpage is a good replacement for Google. I use it all the time. NoScript can block trackers pretty well. Of course, nothing stops Google from tracking you when you use their servers, so try to cut down on it as much as possible.
Click to expand...

Startpage is good, but image search can't be compared to the google one
 
I use StartPage.

I also have a firewall. The first rule is "Deny: *google*. The subsequent rules deny access to any and every Google property I can identify.

A.
 
Razer(x) said:
How do you block google with a firewall?
Click to expand...

If you have a firewall (hardware or software), then you can define rules. In my case I am using Little Snitch, a software firewall. My first rule is to deny any connection, by any program, to any destination in the domain 'google.com'. The same goes for google analytics, doubleclick, and so on.

In addition, and this is not for everyone, I run Safari with a whitelist, e.g. it can only connect on port 80 to pre-defined hosts. Any other connections are automatically blocked. If I want to go to a new site with Safari, I have to add a rule for it explicitly. I make rules to automatically allow access to sites I visit regularly, like MacRumors.

The end result is that I know, with some confidence, what connections my machine is making at any moment in time. I also do not see very many ads :)

A.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back