Just for Kicks

Ars Technica reports that Google wants DNS queries to show the IP addresses of the clients requesting the domains. When Google first revealed that it was providing free DNS servers for anyone who wants to use it, I was already suspicious. They can already track most of your movements through the Internet even when we’re not at Google. With the DNS service provided free of charge, they know even more about us.

With this latest request, the other shoe drops. With information like that, Google can know not only where those who are using their DNS service is going, but also where those who are using other DNS services are going.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a project that shows that even if you disable cookies in your web browser, you can be tracked and distinguished from all the other people visiting the site. It does this by using the information provided by the web browser as you surf. You won’t believe the things that your browser discloses about your unique system fingerprint. See it for yourself at Panopticlick.

Essentially, the more rare your browser is, the more easily tracked you are. So if you are using a less-used browser like Safari, Chrome, and Opera, the likelihood of sites tracking you is even greater. Even if you disable JavaScript and all plugins, the sites can trace your movements, since you’ll be in an even greater minority of users who disable JavaScript and plugins. And if you enable JavaScript and plugins, they can track you just as well, since JavaScript and Flash disclose even more secrets about your system, like the unique combination of fonts you have installed on your system. As a result, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

The company with the most information about your movement is of course Google. It sees you at the search engine. Even when you go to a private site, it knows your movements since so many sites use Google Analytics and Google AdSense. And if you use their Google DNS, they have even more information on you. And don’t forget the ReCAPTCHA too that has been acquired by Google. There is no escape.

Ars Technica just posted an article on the attempt to find the vulnerability that allowed the hacking attempts against Google with Verisign iDefense saying it’s due to an Adobe PDF file, while Adobe denying it and saying it’s due to Internet Explorer.

But let’s face it. Both of them are known vectors for exploits, so it isn’t much of a surprise to anyone that either of them are identified as the culprit. It’s not just the ActiveX feature in IE or the JavaScript executing feature in Adobe Reader that everyone likes to blame. The fact that both are so widely used makes them a huge target and incentive for miscreants to look for holes to exploit. I prefer to use little-known web browsers like Opera for that reason. And although I still use the Adobe Reader, I’m now considering moving to one of the other alternative free PDF readers around. Especially since the Adobe Reader seems to be such a hog on the system.

TechCrunch has a cynical take on Google’s pullout from China, which I find myself agreeing with. Namely, Sarah Lacy says that Google was losing business in China to Baidu anyway, and at the time it made the announcement, it has already decided to pull out. The announcement was a sort of “scorched earth move”, with a view of “buying Google some goodwill in the rest of the world”.

Many have written about Google’s hypocrisy in the past, its business decisions disguised as “do no evil” or some such thing. I think Aaron Wall has a number of posts on that, but he’s not the only one. Ultimately, I think, everyone has to remember that Google is a business. It’s in the game to make a profit. If it has to bend over backwards or compromise to do it, it will do so, as it did in China in the past. I don’t know why people expect something different from Google, as though it is supposed to behave like the Pope or something. Come on, this kind of double-speak is very common from businesses. So, yes, I agree with Sarah Lacy. But I don’t see why it should be surprising to so many people that Google does this sort of thing. Don’t ascribe sainthood to a business organization.

Everyone seems to be talking about how Google acquired ReCAPTCHA so that it can aid their book scanning project. ReCAPTCHA uses words from texts they scan as the CAPTCHA test, so that the test kills 2 birds with 1 stone: it filters spam and it helps to digitize books. I wonder whether that means that ReCAPTCHA will stop digitizing old newspapers to work on Google’s book project. Anyway, for now, ReCAPTCHA will still be hosted at the Carnegie Mellon University.

ReCAPTCHA is easy to implement. There’s a ReCAPTCHA plugin for WordPress for bloggers that use WP, and there’s a free online wizard that can generate a contact form with ReCAPTCHA built-in for webmasters with ordinary websites. I’m sure there are plugins for other blog software too.

I’ve often wondered whether I should add a ReCAPTCHA plugin to this WordPress installation. The only reason I haven’t is that Akismet seems to work very well so far. Except for the glitch I mentioned a few days ago. But that wasn’t really Akismet’s fault.

I finally got around to installing a Canonical URL wordpress plugin. This is a plugin that I’ve been meaning to install for a long time, but put off because I wasn’t sure how difficult it is to set up. It helps WordPress blogs avoid duplicate content problems by inserting a “canonical” tag into each post that tells search engines the correct URL for that post.

I got it from the usual WordPress plugin repository.

Here are some places to ping when you make a new blog post.

Here’s a list of search engines to submit your website for free:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Live Search

I’ll add more as I know of them.