Fogging your Google search history with Python and Reddit

Re:Fogging your Google search history with Python and Reddit by zhan_eg on Thursday December 08, 2016 @12:54PM (#13132363)

Well in fact if you check a section of your Google profile (Ads Settings) [0] you can turn off Ads based on your interests which will result it:

  You will still see ads and they may be based on your general location (such as city or state)
  Ads will not be based on data Google has associated with your Google Account, and so may be less relevant
  You will no longer be able to edit your interests
  All the advertising interests associated with your Google Account will be deleted

If you decide to believe them (as you are by using all their other services), that should be enough :)

[0] - https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated

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Re:Fogging your Google search history with Python and Reddit by nerdponx on Thursday December 08, 2016 @08:27PM (#13135924)

Note that they never state they aren't still caching and selling your data. They just aren't showing you ads based on it.

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Re:Fogging your Google search history with Python and Reddit by dx034 on Friday December 09, 2016 @03:09AM (#13137416)

Google isn't selling your data. They'd never do that. They make nearly all their money with advertising because they have so much good data to target ads. If they sold this data they'd lose their competitive advantage.

It doesn't matter if Google is good or evil, selling user data to other companies would be a very bad business decision in both cases.

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Re:Fogging your Google search history with Python and Reddit by nerdponx on Friday December 09, 2016 @08:55AM (#13138729)

Good point. But selling it or using it in-house, they're still mining it for ad research.

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Re:Fogging your Google search history with Python and Reddit by sysbell on Thursday December 08, 2016 @03:39PM (#13134071)

Very useful, but not entirely the same as the the author is demonstrating. What you referenced is just for ads; what he's trying to fog is the order of the actual SERP.

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