Search engines may be your enemy without a VPN

An interesting fact for some of you that are not already using a VPN. Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo keep all your search history including keywords, IP addresses, cookies etc. on file for 18 months after you did the initial search. Why do they need to keep this data on file? Well only they really know, but if you are not using a Virtual Private Network to hide your true identity than every search, every page and quite possibly everything you have done on the internet in the past 18 months has been tracked and recorded. Yahoo recently changed its policy from 6 months to 18 months after it changed from 18 months to 6 months a few years back.

It doesn’t stop with the search engines either. Google Analytics tracks every user going to a specific website, what they do on that site, how long they are on it, what pages they visit and when they leave it. It can also pinpoint your location down to a few kilometers as you can see if this screen shot below taken from our Google Analytics of a user in California.

Hide your location with a VPN

From Google we can see your location, browser, network speed, internet service provider, screen resolution and more!

Alot of this information is also used to target advertisers. Have you ever searched for something like “how to hide my ip address” and then suddenly your seeing ads on several sites directed to that previous search? Yes you guess it right; the search engine has stored this information and is now targeting specific ads based on that search from cookies stored in your browser. You are now on their marketing list.

So how do you stop this type of behavior and stop yourself from being tracked? Simple you just need to do a few things.

1. Get a VPN, this is the most important security feature to surfing online, it will protect you by encrypting your connection and also hide your true identity by hiding your IP address. View a list of the top VPN providers here.

2. Use the private browsing features in Google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer. This will make sure no data, history, cache or cookies are stored on your computer. In Google its called “Incognito Mode” in Firefox its Private Browsing and in Internet Explorer its called InPrivate browsing. If you need help setting them us send us a message on the Internet Security Forum.

3. Not a necessity, but don’t browse the internet when signed into your Google or Yahoo account. Keep 1 browser specifically for browsing the internet and another one for your emails and personal stuff.

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Saturday, April 23rd, 2011 Data, Internet, Privacy

1 Comment to Search engines may be your enemy without a VPN

  • black_r0se says:
    May 7, 2011 at 10:14 am

    Thanks for the info. it was useful :)

    Reply

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