Search tips

A friend asked me to recommend a browser add-on that would allow her to see generic results when she did a Google search. I convinced her to eschew extensions in favor of the manual approach to search depersonalization.

Google's support site explains how the company uses what it knows about you to personalize your search results. The site also describes how to restrict who sees your personal results, limit whose personal results you see, and customize the feature in other ways.

The most-obvious way to depersonalize searches --at least partially -- is to use your browser's anonymous mode. … Read more

Much has been made of Google's new privacy policy, which takes effect March 1. If you're concerned about Google misusing your personal information or sharing too much of it with advertisers and others, there are plenty of ways to thwart Web trackers.

But what exactly are you thwarting? You don't become anonymous when you block tracking cookies, Web beacons, and the other identifiers as you browse. Your ISP and the sites you visit still know a lot about you, courtesy of the identifying information served up automatically by your browser.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers the Panopticlick … Read more

In today's plugged-in world, "right now" is too slow. We're spoiled by the ability to discover the most obscure bits of information in less than a second simply by entering a word or phrase in a Web search engine. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The need for search speed may not let up until Google is able to read our minds--a day that may not be far off, for better or worse. Putting aside fears of an information-utility monopoly, there's no denying Google's ability to save time. To ensure the productivity-boost … Read more

In their never-ending quest to steal your credit card and bank account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers, and other sensitive personal information, malware purveyors go wherever the eyeballs are. Lately, the bad guys have increasingly been targeting the links served up by Web search engines.

Two computer security firms recently issued press releases touting the dangers of searching for popular terms, such as the names of starlets or items in the news. Barracuda Labs' 2010 Midyear Security Report highlights the risks of entering a popular topic in Google, Bing, or Yahoo. The company entered thousands of search terms in these … Read more

It's getting more and more difficult to protect your privacy on the Web. Just as we're invited to share our thoughts and experiences with friends, family, and the universe, there's somebody recording it all and looking to make a buck from it, legally or otherwise. The key is to find the right balance between the Web's convenience and your security.

Here are five Firefox add-ons that help keep you safe on the Web without hindering your full use out of its best services. (Note that last month I described free Facebook security scanners, and in April … Read more

Google is listening.

As Marguerite Reardon and Tom Krazit reported on May 14 in CNET's Signal Strength blog, the search giant has swept up wireless-network addresses, along with other data its Street View vehicles have been collecting on their unprecedented world tour.

Google or some other company may have already plotted the location of your home or office wireless network, but you can make it more difficult for the next nosy megacorporation--or a neighbor or passing stranger--to discover your hot spot by disabling its Service Set Identifier (SSID).

By default, wireless access points transmit their presence to let wireless … Read more

There's no reason to take the Web as it comes. Not when there are Firefox add-ons that turn Web pages into putty that you can shape as you wish. These three--Zotero, MashLogic, and RSVP Reader--let you gather and store all or parts of Web pages, open a customizable info box for whatever topics you encounter, and convert a block of text into a string of phrases that flash in a box at a speed you control.

Turn your favorite pages into collections A few days ago, I wrote about three add-ons that go bookmarks one better by … Read more

Privacy advocates aren't pleased with Google Web History, which records the sites you visit, searches you make, images and videos you view, and even sites you haven't been to but may like. When you create a Google account, the option to use Web History is checked by default. Opting out doesn't mean Google doesn't collect the information, just that you don't have such easy access to it.

It feels like I've been using Gmail for five or six years, but I found my Web history begins in January 2007, according to Google. The entries … Read more

The first thing I saw when I booted my PC yesterday evening was a notice that Google had prevented my default search setting from being changed. I certainly didn't want to switch from searching via Google by default. I hadn't even been considering a search change, regardless of Bing's pretty wallpaper.

To find out what program was trying to change my search default, I opened Vista's Event Viewer by pressing the Windows key, typing event viewer, and pressing Enter. I clicked Application in the left pane and scrolled to the approximate time the warning popped up. … Read more