One of these days is none of these days - English proverb
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Google Toolbar keeps going and going
GOOGLE'S TOOLBAR is more persistent than you'd like about sending all your search stats to Google, even though you've told it not to do so, if a recent claim is correct.
The problem was brought to light by Ben Edelman, a lawyer who serves as co-counsel in a few legal actions against the search engine giant. He does disclose this connection on his webpage.
According to Edelman, Google Toolbar is just too hard to shake. Especially if it's doing something you've explicitly told it you don't want it to continue doing.
If you flip the switch and tell Google Toolbar to stop reporting your search queries to Google, the little app will just keep at it anyway apparently, albeit invisible to the user, firing query after query of your private searches off to Google's mothership. However, this will only happen if you've previously activated Google Toolbar's enhanced features, which he points out is far too easy to do.
Edelman provides screen captures and video footage of the processing, just in case naysayers claim it's not true. He also argues that Google didn't put much effort into alerting people about it. Of course users, being the odd lot that we are, care little about reading terms and conditions, as that's often the only thing standing between us and making use of the app we want to use.
There is a valid point here, of course. When you disable the toolbar, you do it because you don't really want to send those "stats" about your search queries back to Google. It obviously defeats the purpose of disabling the toolbar if those "Enhanced Features" keep sending your information off to Google's Borg hive anyway.
Google hasn't yet responded to inquiries, but this is something that should quickly go away with a software update to the Google Toolbar and fall into a void of Google's Really Bad Ideas. µ
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Un-install it instead of disabling it!.
if the google toolbar still sent your data after being uninstalled then i would think that there is something evil.
when something is disabled and still works then it is a programming oversight.
i.e. treat google toolbar like a person...removeing the person from your house is the only way you know a perrson won't report on you.
cause disabling the person(google) is like the person installed a bug in your house to spite you!.
Same as MS sending its Windows Search results back to MS, a few years ago:
ANY machine, ANYwhere that has legal requirement to not forward the private info stored in it to 3rd party entities breaks the law with this arrangement, courtesy of MS before, and Google now.
Glad to know our freedom/lives are being jeapordised by these incorporated gangs, isn't it?
( yes people die in prison, hence the lives bit )
I am bemused when I see people still using this thing. Every browser now has a search box (and usually a much more flexible one) which it duplicates in a wasteful manner. The only vaguely useful feature I know some people like is the auto-completion stuff, and decent browsers are tending towards offering that built-in also. Or do people get a kick out of an already slow browser taking even longer to load?
One other 'feature' of the Google Toolbar (in Firefox), is that it sets Firefox's preferences to Always Allow google.com cookies, even if you instruct Firefox to remove all cookies at the end of the session. This becomes a problem when you uninstall the Google Toolbar, and Google secretly tracks you for the next 18 months.
Now do I have to worry about Google Chrome too?
If you read the dude's thing carefully, you'll see that it only keeps going and going once you disable the tool bar, for that particular browsing session. When you restart your browser, and every time after, it will not call home. So I don't see this as a big deal whatsoever. Restarting a browser 1 time is not that big of a deal.
More Spyware... Uninstall it if you want a free ride on the web!!
Krevin: The key feature is called"Disable Google Toolbar only for this window". Once a user closes and reopens his browser, the tracking is *supposed* to turn back on. So, what happens within the single, current browsing session is the whole point. It's no answer to say the user should restart his browser to enjoy a disabling feature that's supposed to affect the current browser window; in that nonsensical interpretation, the user would never get a chance to actually use the browser in tracking-free mode.
Theirs been a big mistake, this person couldn't be referring to Google, as Google wouldn't do this. Its obvious he's referring to what the Chinese have been doing to Google or something close to it.:)