[ExI] phony google

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill
Subject: Re: [ExI] phony google

 

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:19 PM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>>.If little tiny innocent microscopic spike can think of this, the internet
hipsters would be all over it 20 yrs ago.  So how do I know if I have a
counterfeit Google now? . spike

 

>.Use a trustworthy browser and trustworthy plug-ins. Go to google.com (or
search from the URLtoolbar). Use HTTPS instead of HTTP. Avoid Windows.
Understand that no matter what you do, you can't be sure that some bad guy
isn't listening/intercepting/redirecting anything/everything you do: you can
only make it harder for them to do that. -Dave

 

I have an idea Dave.  I need some of you scriptsters to think about this and
perhaps spin up some of your magic.

A script could randomly generate three or four terms and search on them.  A
way to do that would be to download about a couple years of ExI-chat or
Mensa archives, turn it into a straight text file or for that matter drop it
into a spreadsheet (sorry, it's the old hammer thing again), then randomly
choose three or four words from that, search on them, open a random link in
the top 30 for some random interval, repeat.  

If the same websites keep coming up in the top 30 results, we know that
either we have a bogus Google or that Google has gone over to the dark side
and has ceased being not evil.

Another bonus for those of us who worry about privacy would be that it would
obscure our web searches.  Last year a very public court case used web
search history as evidence in a criminal case.  A young mother had evidently
searched on chloroform.  Later her baby perished under suspicious
circumstances.  The web search records were used in court.  

What if we have some embarrassing thing we have searched, perhaps some kinky
sex practice, we didn't even do but wanted to know what it is.  Good chance
it would be better if a potential employer didn't get that info.  The script
mentioned above could bury your possible latex chicken obsession under
mountains of search terms.  In fact, we could even intentionally put decoy
terms in there to intentionally distract those who would call attention to
my latex chicken searches.  THEORETICAL latex chicken searches of course, I
mean, you know, if anyone else other than ME, had you know, like, searched
on something like that, theoretically and all.

Scriptsters, what do we do now, coach?

spike

 

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