Google gonna find out who’s been naughty or nice

evilgoog.pngEvery geek knows that google search tracks user behavior. When you use google search engine your queries, queries time and clicked results are recorded by google in order to improve their service and if you are into conspiracy theories, to profile people. Since 70% of the people use google it’s not a small matter – google has a lot of data on how/what we search for and what sites answer our query. Usually people who hear this story react in two ways: the easy going say “who cares.. I have nothing to hide” the more privacy cautious start deleting their cookies.

This is an old story, but it has a new twist to it which I have noticed only recently. When I was visiting my favorite torrent site I noticed that they are using Google Analytics as their site analysis service. I found it very strange. Not only does google track my online habits on their search engine, they can now track me on none google sites as well. It all started 2 years ago when google opened up Google Analytics, till then a paid service, for free use by the public. Till then it cost about $5k a year for websites to have similar web analytics and this was a real treat to a lot of websites. Slowly, one after the other, more and more websites started using google analytics, which is a hosted software on Google’s servers, as their web analytics software. In essence, Google got a full knowledge of where we go, what we do there, where we go from there, what we search for and what we do after we find it – no matter where we are on the web.

I knew a lot of sites use google analytics, after all it’s a great service, but I didn’t expect a torrent site to run it due to its “controversial” content. I wondered how many big sites run analytics or are tracked by google. So I ran a little test on the most popular sites according to alexa:

Alexa
Rank
Site Domain Google
has stats?
1 Yahoo! www.yahoo.com  
2 Google www.google.com yes
3 Windows Live www.live.com  
4 YouTube www.youtube.com yes
5 Microsoft Network (MSN) www.msn.com  
6 Myspace www.myspace.com  
7 Facebook www.facebook.com  
8 Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org  
9 Hi5 www.hi5.com  
10 Orkut www.orkut.com yes
11 Rapidshare.com www.rapidshare.com  
12 Blogger.com www.blogger.com yes
13 Megaupload www.megaupload.com  
14 Friendster www.friendster.com yes
15 Yahoo!カテゴリ www.yahoo.co.jp  
16 Baidu.com www.baidu.com  
17 Fotolog www.fotolog.net yes
18 Microsoft Corporation www.microsoft.com  
19 Google.fr www.google.fr yes
20 EBay www.ebay.com  
21 腾讯网(http://www.qq.com) www.qq.com  
22 Skyrock www.skyrock.com  
23 Google www.google.cl yes
24 Почта@Mail.ru www.mail.ru  
25 Google www.google.com.br yes
26 Seznam www.seznam.cz  
27 Google www.google.de yes
28 Google
UK
www.google.co.uk yes
29 Google España www.google.es yes
30 Megarotic.com www.megarotic.com  
31 Amazon.com www.amazon.com  
32 新浪新闻中心 www.sina.com.cn  
33 Flickr www.flickr.com  
34 Google Polska www.google.pl yes
35 The Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com  
36 Photobucket image
hosting and photo sharing
www.photobucket.com yes
37 ImageShack www.imageshack.us  
38 無名小站 www.wretch.cc  
39 Youporn.com www.youporn.com yes
40 Google México www.google.com.mx yes
41 Dailymotion.com www.dailymotion.com  
42 Megavideo.com www.megavideo.com  
43 Яndex www.yandex.ru  
44 Go www.go.com  
45 Onet.pl www.onet.pl  
46 ImageVenue hosting www.imagevenue.com yes
47 Google
India
www.google.co.in yes
48 BBC Newsline Ticker www.bbc.co.uk  
49 Free www.free.fr  
50 Universo Online www.uol.com.br  
51 AOL www.aol.com  
52 Allegro www.allegro.pl  
53 Craigslist.org www.craigslist.org  
54 FC2 www.fc2.com yes
55 LiveJournal www.livejournal.com  
56 Google Perú www.google.com.pe yes
57 Deviantart.com www.deviantart.com yes
58 Wordpress.com www.wordpress.com  
59 Mininova www.mininova.org yes
60 Google.ca   yes
61 Google 日本 www.google.co.jp yes
62 Google.cn www.google.cn yes
63 网易 www.163.com  
64 Google.com.vn www.google.com.vn yes
65 MetroFlog www.metroflog.com yes
66 Google.com.ar www.google.com.ar yes
67 Google.co.ve www.google.co.ve yes
68 Рамблер www.rambler.ru  
69 Adult Friendfinder www.adultfriendfinder.com yes
70 Vkontakte.ru www.vkontakte.ru  
71 Netlog.com www.netlog.com yes
72 淘宝网 www.taobao.com  
73 Ebay www.ebay.de  
74 Google www.google.it yes
75 Sohu.com Inc. www.sohu.com  
76 Veoh.com www.veoh.com  
77 Wirtualna Polska www.wp.pl  
78 Google Türkiye www.google.com.tr yes
79 VnExpress www.vnexpress.net yes
80 Mozilla.com www.mozilla.com  
81 Sendspace.com www.sendspace.com yes
82 กูเกิลประเทศไทย www.google.co.th  
83 Geocities www.geocities.com  
84 Google.com.eg www.google.com.eg yes
85 Googlesyndication.com www.googlesyndication.com yes
86 EBay
UK
www.ebay.co.uk  
87 Google
Colombia
www.google.com.co yes
88 جوجل
السعودية
www.google.com.sa yes
89 Fotka.pl www.fotka.pl yes
90 Google www.google.sk yes
91 Apple Computer, Inc. www.apple.com  
92 Yourfilehost.com www.yourfilehost.com  
93 Xanga www.xanga.com  
94 Terra www.terra.com.br  
95 Badongo www.badongo.com  
96 Badoo.Com www.badoo.com  
97 Mixi www.mixi.jp  
98 雅虎中国 www.yahoo.com.cn  
99 Adobe www.adobe.com  
100 Iwiw.hu www.iwiw.hu  
       

41 of the 100 most popular sites are tracked by Google, and anything you say, post, read or do there is recorded by Google. If you remove google search sites you learn that 14 out of 74 top websites use Google Analytics. These do not include sites that use adwords or google search in their websites which also adds information to google’s tracking and profiling. That is a lot. You would expect site owners to hide their site stats from google. I was especially surprised by friendster, adult friend finder and Fotolog usage of Google Analytics… you would expect them to guard their stats data and host some other web analytics application. People who like to visit mininova or Youporn probably get an un easy feeling as well. As you can see Google knows a lot about your online habits. You can argue that they don’t use the data or that not much can be done with all this data but without a doubt Google holds too much information on all of us. Especially as a corporate that does not like to disclose what they do with all that tracked data.

For the more privacy cautious between us the solution for preventing any site’s Google Analytics to record any information on us is quite simple. Just add to your hosts file the following lines:
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 *.google-analytics.com

Google Analytics javascript won’t be downloaded to your computer nor will it be able to send data home.

You better
Watch out
you better not cry,
you better not pout I’m tellin’ you why,
Google is coming to town,
they are making a list checking it twice,
gonna find out who’s naughty or nice,
Google is coming to town.

I don’t know why but the original song has a less scary feel to it.

One Comment

  1. Kendra
    Posted August 15, 2008 at 6:12 am | Permalink

    Apparently Mypace (and/or the applications)IS/ARE using this now as I can’t open the Mobsters or Heroes game. When I look at the bottom of my page to see what’s trying to open, it says google-analytics.com. I’m sure it’s a great program, but it sucks that it messes up other programs or slows them down.

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