Scary Google - be careful

[Old and Horrified]

I've got a small home WiFi network and normally use Google for search and a Gmail address for emails on my Windows 7 desktop machine. So far, so good. A week or so ago, my wife bought herself a Samsung tablet and I helped her set it up by connecting to the house WiFi and getting her her own, separate, Gmail account (Android seems to make that more or less essential).

However, last night she pressed the tablet Home button which, if it is held down, launches Google search and wow, her tablet listed the last three Google searches that I had made on my desktop! As you can imagine, that could have been a little embarrassing! Luckily I had been researching bathroom upgrades so it might even have got me some bonus points.

I know that Google shares search data with advertisers, that's how their business works and I realise our two machines are probably using the same IP address, but sharing search information between two separate Gmail accounts on different computers? I really don't like that. It makes me wonder what else Google is sharing from my machine.

Anyone else out there who was not aware of this - be careful!

I think its time to investigate alternate search engines......

[Booglebox]

I like DuckDuckGo. Apart from anything else it's a much more efficient tool, due to the !bang function. You may notice airliners.net and airframes.org in there - I added those
If you want to use Google you can do "!g" in front of your query and DDG will make it as anonymous as possible.
Blur / Ghostery also help.

[Stanwell]

Yeah.
I had determined some time back that Google are up to no good.
'Ethics' and 'Integrity' are two words that have been expunged from their dictionary.

Just my ever so humble opinion, of course.

[onetrack]

Googles aim is to be everything, including family, to you. Big Brother mostly.

[OFSO]

1) Don't use Google for search, use StartPage. Especially if you want to keep search results confidential.
2) Enjoy the fact that Google synchronises data between all your devices and that you can - in the event that one device is u/s - go and buy another one which is immediately able to access everything you've previously done. If you don't like this, see (1) above.
3) My HTC Android threw a wobbly yesterday and it took less than five minutes to reload back to where I was beforehand.
4) I have several google a/c's and they have never cross-fertilised.

Google isn't scary unless you use it without understanding the philosophy of their structure.

[Capetonian]

I have never been comfortable with Google's collection of data and browsing habits. I have a gmail account which I use for non-important and non-confidential stuff. I don't use Google Chrome or Google+ but I am still pestered with 'invitations' related to the latter.

All the browsers and search engines are probably equally guilty of being intrusive.

[mixture]

Old and Horrified,

Apt screen name by the way !

Whilst you could follow the "use other search engines" advice suggested by others, I would propose two things :

(1) Don't use Google Search whilst logged in

(2) Just incase you can't entirely avoid (1), review ALL your Google privacy settings on your Google account (they are hidden away all over the place, it'll take you a while to find all the nooks and crannies).

(3) Either set your browser to block Google's ability to set cookies (Firefox can do this quite easily) or configure your browser to work in private browsing mode. If Google can't set cookies, then it has limited ability to do any sort of long term tracking ....

[Old and Horrified]

Thanks for all your helpful comments. I had not heard of duckduckgo before and I will certainly give it a try. I used to think I was reasonably tech-savvy, but I clearly had no idea of how invasive Google has become. A salutary lesson.

Mixture - my moniker originally referred to concern about the increasing use of automation and the corresponding decrease in basic flying skills that has become self-evident in commercial civil aviation over the last several years and how a flying career is now very different to what is was back in my day. However - maybe it also now can refer to Google?

[Ancient Observer]

I just set up FF/Google to delete everything on exit. A couple of time a week get ccleaner and jetclean to make sure that stuff is deleted. It has a downside - I need to log in each time I come to pprune and elsewhere.
I can live with that for the extra security.

[dazdaz1]

As do I. tools>options> Select 'Do not tell sites my tracking preferences' then lower down the page..... 'You may also want to clear current history' Left click then 'clear now' your taken back to the original window. Click OK I do it a number of times while on the net.

I recommend doing the above with sites one does not frequently visit.

[KBPsen]

Your wife is not going to get your search history on her tablet, unless she has been signed in to her Google account on your desktop, then not signed out, after which you have used Chrome.

[India Four Two]

I like DuckDuckGo.

Me too. I found the site about a year ago, when I started using Ghostery.

DuckDuckGo has a following among web geeks, but the search engine is by no means a household name like Google or [current Geekosystem advertiser] Bing. But founder and sole employee Gabriel Weinberg hopes to change that, and he’s gone on the offensive with the above billboard, which takes a swing at Google over its habit of tracking user searches.

According to Wired, Weinberg paid $7000 to rent the billboard space in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood.

Weinberg’s search engine avoids the problem of referrers — the habit of web browsers telling a new webpage what page you just came from — by doing a quick redirect any time you click on a link in DuckDuckGo. Like Google, DuckDuckGo also offers an HTTPS version of its search engine, which naturally only passes the top-level domain you are coming from (e.g. https ://google.com), instead of passing the entire url along (e.g. http ://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=what+I’m+searching+for).

Google’s search results have come under fire lately from the techy set as well, thanks to the proliferation of companies that game search to return low-quality, mass produced copy ladened with ads; a recent Lifehacker poll found that 77% of the site’s plugged-in readership thinks that Google’s results have gotten less useful lately.

Upstart Search Engine DuckDuckGo Slams Google Privacy in Billboard | The Mary Sue

[Booglebox]

If DDG is not getting the results you want, just press: [Home] !g [Enter] to Google it. But the result will be sent to encrypted.google.com anonymously (stripped of most identifying characteristics). This hugely reduces Google's ability to track you.

Remember, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that everybody isn't out to get you.

[India Four Two]

I forgot to mention that you can select DDG as the default search engine on iPhones and iPads.