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Google Busted With Hand in the Safari Cookie Jar


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Google Busted With Hand in the Safari Cookie Jar
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Mugge
Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
 
2012-02-18, 11:42

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...rowser-cookie/



My take is, that if there was no reason for Safaris default setting before then there sure is now. What I don't get is how it can remain possible to do this for any duration of time seeing how this sounds like a security bug that Apple would fix, should fix.
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torifile
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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2012-02-18, 16:32

I am increasingly frustrated with google lately. Search results seem like complete shit and they are trying to be too smart for their own good - it used to be that every search term you typed would be found within close proximity on the page they returned. Now I'm lucky if they're all on the same page. They think they know what I'm trying to spell when they don't. I was looking for something about "weakly held beliefs" and it returned results for "weekly held beliefs" or lots of church sermons. Complete junk these days...

I'm not surprised that they are including all these tangentially related stuff to their search algorithms. Garbage in, garbage out.

If it's not red and showing substantial musculature, you're wearing it wrong.
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tomoe
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Join Date: Nov 2006
 
2012-02-18, 17:29

The Google search autocorrect drives me up the fucking wall. I also can't stand all the aggregate sites. I seem to remember a brief period where Google had the option to remove sites from search results. I wish there was a custom browser plug-in that would let me append "-site:www.dumbshitaggregator.com" tags to all of my searches...

Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch
He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick
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Kraetos
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2012-02-18, 19:48

I'd use DuckDuckGo if it was easy to make Safari use it. Yahoo! and Bing aren't real alternatives. Bing powers Yahoo! openly and I think we all know that Google powers Bing whether Microsoft will admit it or not. In other words, your options for "Default search engine" in Safari are Google, Google, and Google.

I can make desktop Safari use DuckDuckGo with an extension but there's no way to get MobileSafari to use it short of jailbreaking. So... yeah. The current search landscape depresses me.

Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
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Mugge
Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
 
2012-02-19, 06:40

A little more info on the matter courtesy OS News.

Looks like someone at Google fixed the bug in Webkit seven months ago. I wonder if that specific person knew about Googles practice of exploiting the bug or not because it would be quite funny if it turned out that one part of Google did not know what the other was doing.
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chucker
 
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2012-02-19, 06:58

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mugge View Post
it would be quite funny if it turned out that one part of Google did not know what the other was doing.
There's a very high chance of this.
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Mugge
Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
 
2012-02-20, 15:35

And now MS accuses Google of doing the same with IE.

Maybe I should also give DDG a go again.
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addabox
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
 
2012-02-20, 16:45

Talk about reality distortion fields. Google does this over and over and over again. Somebody takes a closer look and notices that "privacy" is only ever the merest fig-leaf at the 'plex, Google apologizes and claims it was all a big misunderstanding/error, promises to fix it, and moves on to the next abuse.

And yet where are the fulminations from the tech press that greet each and every Apple lapse, even when said lapse is semi-bogus? "Location-gate" my ass-- a database of cell towers resident on the phone, and you would have thought Apple was creeping through your bedroom window. Circumnavigate privacy settings to be sure to be able to continue to harvest your information and keep those ad dollars flowing? Whatevs.

I realize that Google cultivates a cooler, more free-swinging vibe than Apple, and that Apple comes across as secretive and paranoid compared to Google's "hey everybody, we made some awesome tech we want to share!" routine, but at what point does that act fall flat? How many times does Google have to do this before its defenders get tired of it?

And yes, I know that many entities collect information and that some of that is inevitable nowadays. But no one entity collects as much information as Google, potentially, if you buy in heavily to Google services, pretty much everything about you besides your dreams (and I suspect they have a pretty good handle on that).

And they clearly, clearly are taking steps to make sure you can't turn them off, all the while pretending that they're just totally about customer choice and easy to access privacy controls.

At this point, I don't see why anyone would trust a single word they say.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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Wrao
Yarp
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
 
2012-02-20, 20:11

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
"Location-gate" my ass-- a... Circumnavigate privacy .....

I can't be the only one who took a split second thinking "wait, which controversy was Circumnavigate?"

I mostly agree with your post though, Google has gotten a free pass for a long time, and while the jury might still be out as to the extent of their 'be evil' practices, that doesn't change the lopsided perceptions and coverage that Google's missteps get compared to Apple's (Though realistically, it's more like Apple versus any other company when it comes to lopsided coverage)
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Wrao
Yarp
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
 
2012-02-20, 20:16

I think one of the strange things I've seen from people defending Google on this is the claim that MS and Apple deserve it for not having their browsers secure enough to prevent something like this from happening. People are talking about Google Fanboyism right? The Cult of Google is becoming every bit as detached from reality and logic as the worst of the worst Cult of Mac people were. Even more in some respects as Google has always been more dominant and mainstream where the Mac fanboyism was more a byproduct of underdog worship.
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Noel
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Chicago
 
2012-02-21, 18:45

Now there's a class-action suit about this.
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nikstar101
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2012-02-24, 03:38

Well I have always been a bit of a Google skeptic and this doesn't really surprise me. I mean they are company that deals in information and using that information to sell ads and make money. So if you were Google you would take as much information as you could. And that is reflected in their business practices and senior management talk.

I think there will be a revelation in the near future where people will realise how information they are giving away. But then again most kids these days don't care that Google knows everything about them. So maybe it will be the older generation the kicks up a fuss?
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