In a previous article here at SoftSailor, we talked about how much Google knows about you. What you have to know is that besides Google, AOL, Yahoo!, Google and Bing are able to create individual profiles based on what you search online using their search engines.
If you do not feel comfortably knowing this (as those individual profiles sometimes actually reflect the identity of the user), you might want to prevent data profiling from happening, or at least find a way to make those profiles as inaccurate as possible. Fortunately, a free Mozilla Firefox add-on called TrackMeNot is just what you need.
TrackMeNot is a free Mozilla Firefox extension (compatible with Firefox 3.5) that will prevent data profiling by search engines. This is done by “noise and obfuscation”, as the producers themselves state. By noise and obfuscation, the producers mean that the TrackMeNot extension will send large amounts of false data (meaning, data concerning search quereys that you never performed). This way, the real data is lost among the fake data, making it virtually impossible for search engines to create profiles that reflect your identity.
Prevent Search Engine Profiling
All you have to do is install TrackMeNot, make some easy settings and you are done. When TrackMeNot is active, the “noise” will be created automatically, with no user input (aka “you don’t have to worry about it”). It’s simple, it’s effective and it really tends to a tricky issue. Click here to download TrackMeNot from the official Mozilla Firefox Add-On Page.
