Sunday, February 01, 2009

''lisa simpson goddess population of tiny people watch''

Defining Random
Kathmandu


...Someone landed on this blog by typing the above words into a Google search. From Turkey, no less.

8 comments:

Captain Nemo said...

I am curious. How can you determine what Google searches bring up your site?

Captain Nemo said...

The more I think of it, the more it seems a privacy issue to me.

The fact that you can get the information about the IP and the Google search content of someone landing to your site by clicking a Google search result link, means that the Google page sends back to Google the data about the search results clicked, and that Google seems to give that info very liberally around.

And even if they give you only the country, that would suggest that they sell the full IP to commercial web sites... Problematic.

Sirensongs said...

Answer #1 - The same way i know you are trolling from Croatia, TROLL!!
Answer #2 - If you don't like it, don't tune in. Dem's da rules on this and most other blogs - sitemetering devices provide info on visitors, their ISPs, referrals, in and out pages, and geo location.

it does help prevent anonymous harassment, so I can see why you'd be threatened by it.

Captain Nemo said...

Nope, not threatened, because you can see "my" IP without involving Google, therefore you knowing "my" IP is not the issue.
Google is, if Google sends you the syntax of a search on their engine.

This is an issue beyond you and me...

Captain Nemo said...

What's "Dem's da"? I'm not familiar with ebonics?

Captain Nemo said...

This is indeed a serious security problem and seems to have to do with Google Cookies.

It seems that Google uses these cookies to make the profile for all Google searches made from any computer accessing Google.

I your case it even send you the search syntax of searches that landed to your blog, which is the summum of impudence on their side, as you, as a private person with no legal ingerences, should not be abilitated to get such info.

Who knows whom they sell such information to...

Some links:

http://www.google-watch.org

http://www.google-watch.org/cgi-bin/cookie.htm

http://www.google-watch.org/krane.html

Captain Nemo said...

It sems that I was wrong.
Google is not the culprit, something called "Referer header" is, and is part of the HTTP protocol itself.

It can be turned off.

Here's the procedure on Firefox:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.sendRefererHeader

Captain Nemo said...

Another link where one comment explains in what situation it might not be wise to disable referer header sending (when you charge your credit card on the net), and also contains info for designing links that block referer sending:

http://cafe.elharo.com/privacy/privacy-tip-3-block-referer-headers-in-firefox/