"does this also happen for sites with Google Analytics?"
As far as I know (which is more than a guess), it does not.
How does Google know about my GameDev.net profile?
This is serious shit. A run a search on myself a few times per year but so far I never found anything even remotely as scary as that!
If you're paranoid about your information getting out, that's about the last thing you should do. Typically, if I recall correctly, the number one name a person typically looks for on search engines, when you remove celebrities, is their own name.
damn, every account get's it's own email address must be kindof insane to keep track of after a bit
My girlfriend manages this by having her own domain name with an unlimited number of email accounts associated with it. So her FB email address is facebook@hername.com, her myspace email address is myspace@hername.com, etc.
I do this too, I think it's a good idea. I view them all through my old gmail address though :P Should probably go with a real email client at some point....
I trust duckduckgo which claims to do pure searching.
And by the way, how does it knows I'm searching about myself and not one of the other three guys with same name and surname (and in 1 case, age)?
My GD.net profile page doesn't list my email, except to people logged in as moderators... but one day I got a personalized email from a google HR representative asking me if I'd like to apply for a job, and they referenced posts that I'd made on this board!
But that might be manual search which is much easier - they found something you wrote here and decided to check you out. A bit of digging around turns up all kinds of things. Are you sure your GD account doesn't allow GD to pass your name onto interested companies, some sites do this.
Does Google Chrome gather any "extra" information? Also doesnt google use bots, crawlers, zerglings etc... to gather information even if you are avoid their services like the scourge?
This discussions got me thinking, is it possible to avoid directed adds and lessen the data gathering by using vpn or tor?
This discussions got me thinking, is it possible to avoid directed adds and lessen the data gathering by using vpn or tor?
[quote name='Psilobe' timestamp='1358550359' post='5023018']
is it possible to lessen the data gathering by using vpn or tor?[/quote]
My guess would be minimally, if at all.
Your IP has to be fairly stable in the short-term if you want to access common services (servers will tend to disconnect your session when your IP changes). And companies like Google are already very good at correlating dynamic IP addresses to the same user...
Does Google Chrome gather any "extra" information?
Only to the extent of offering search suggestions when using the search bar - but that's something the google search engine does anyway, so it's just as if you were using Google.com directly - and you can disable it in Chrome's settings or change your search provider.
The other thing is every letter you type into the search box is instantly returned as a search "C(at) - Ca(t) - Cat - Cat P(ictures) - Cat Pi(ctures)" - when you do that, naturally it has to send every keystroke (in the browser search box) to Google to instantly return results - but it warns you ahead of time ("Enable Instant for faster searching (omnibox input may be logged)", and you can disable it, and I think it's even disabled by default.
Google Chrome is also open-source, so it's more likely to get caught doing extra monitoring than something closed-source.
[quote name='Servant of the Lord' timestamp='1358554037' post='5023037']
Only to the extent of offering search suggestions when using the search bar - but that's something the google search engine does anyway[/quote]
It also happens in pretty much every other major browser - Safari and Firefox both offer live search suggestions too (though I don't recall if you have to install it separately for FireFox).
Author
Google Chrome is also open-source, so it's more likely to get caught doing extra monitoring than something closed-source.
Kind of*. A large part of Chrome was released in September, 2008 as the open source Chromium project[1]. Chrome itself isn't really open source; it's Chromium that is the open source project (which Chrome pulls from). However, the differences between the two are pretty minimal. Chrome for Android is a fork of Chromium, but they try to merge changes to it back into Chromium and WebKit to resolve the fork. Chrome collects a little bit of info, but like you said its quite minimal. It also implements Do Not Track, if you want that.
*Sorry, I hate to nitpick! I just think the subtle differences are interesting.
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