on January 31, 2008 by lieven in general, mac, Comments (2)
block google analytics cookies
google analytics
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When more than 200.000 websites are using google analytics, a one-man action proposed last time to de-activate GA on neverendingbooks is pretty useless. Perhaps a better alternative is :
When you use google analytics on your site, announce this and add a link to CustomizeGoogle BLOCK GOOGLE ANALYTICS COOKIES. Your visitors can then decide whether or not to block google analytics cookies only.
Or link to this post, as I’ll give a detailed step-by-step instruction so that even web-newbies can protect themselves agains google analytics stalking cookies.
1. Surf using a Firefox-clone Because CustomizeGoogle “is a Firefox extension that enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam)” it only works on Firefox-like browsers. Screenshots below use Flock, the mac “social web browser”.
2. Go to CustomizeGoogle BLOCK GOOGLE ANALYTICS COOKIES and click on the Install Now! link (upper right)
3. A warning message will appear saying “Flock prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer”. As we do want to install, click on the Edit Options button (on the left).
4. A pop-up window appears and click on the allow-button.
5. Click again on the Install Now! link from CustomizeGoogle. A pop-up will appear asking you to confirm installation of the extension. Click on the install-buttom (right below).
6. Installation complete! But you have to restart before you can use it. Click on the restart button and Flock will do it.
7. Select under Flock/Tools CustomizeGoogle Options.
8. A pane pops up with plenty of configurable options.
9. Select “Privacy” and mark the ‘Don’t send any cookies to GoogleAnalytics’ option.
10. Done! You can now surf to any of the 200.000+ google-analytics-powered sites without being stalked!
Using this feature makes you more anonymous. But your visit on a single webpage can still be logged. This way, both Google and the owner of the website knows that someone visited a webpage, but it’s difficult to track all pages you’re visiting. And it’s really really hard for Google to track that you visited both Website A and Website B.
Hi, I'm a professor of mathematics at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium. My research areas are non-commutative algebra and non-commutative geometry. Sometimes, you can also find me here :
Kea
January 31, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Heh, great, thanks! I put it on Firefox. Some of the options are excellent – like ad removal!
Super Rat
July 30, 2009 @ 11:33 am
I dont entirely agree, just download latest firefox (3.5.1 at time of writing) Then go to add ons (just gooogle firefox add ons) and download: NoScript (superb and you can block google analytics with it, as well as google syndication and any other scripts you so wish to) Bad Privacy (deletes all those super cookies and flash lso’s that doing a normal delete all and cleaning out ya temp files won’t get rid off, nor will even a dedicated program like cc cleaner etc as good as that is, so it’s essential in my own opinion) Ad Block Plus (fantastic lil program)
And others that are good but in no means security related are: Dictionary (your own language of choice of course)
Tab Mix Plus (for some reason, Mozillas addon page does not have compatitble version with the latest firefox :S wierd, but below is a link to the addonn authors page which goes to a dev link which is totally 100% compatible
http://tmp.garyr.net/tabmixplus-dev-build.xpi
Hope that helps, adios
Super Rat
PS: actually stop using google is another opinion (also entirely mine lol) I myself now very happily use Bing http://www.bing.com I find there page fresher and nicer to use, its easier to say lol, and most importantly results are easily on a par if not far better IMO, especially image search IMO (pleasssssse note i/we do not need a load of google lovers telling me im wrong, i have gone to the trouble of explaining this in my OWN personal opinion, of years of using google and months of happily using Bing, thanks).
Be daring, use something different and see for yourself, or not…
Also if you use firefox and you want an add on to add Bing as the default search engine in the in built search engine, please go to
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/latest/10434/addon-10434-latest.xml?src=addondetail
AND BING DOESN’T TRACK YOU to the massive extent that google do – lol yet… But the point is they don’t at present where as google blatantly do!