This is so weird. Can someone exlpain this?

[tangerine911S]

I live in one state and work in another. I have a Macbook at home that has been to the office once, not recently. I have a laptop at work that stays at work and has been home once or twice, not recently. When doing a google search, somehow it recognizes the number of visits and time of visit when I was at home on my Macbook. When doing the same google search from home, it knows that I visited one of the search results as work. My website history does not transfer between computers but the number of visits that google tracks does. What is going on? How does it know its even me? How the hell is this possible?

I am at home home now and I was at this site today at work apparently at 12:11pm

[stomachmonkey]

Do you have a gmail account? Google analytics account?

If you've logged into any google service on both machines regardless of their location you likely have a cookie that identifies you to google. The cookie would get read even if you were not logged in.

[tangerine911S]

I have a gmail account. That makes sense. Can I avoid this by deleting and disallowing cookies on one or both machines?

[Scott R]

"ghostery" will stop that. It's a browser add in. Stops all the Google analytics and the other crap as well.

Ghostery - Download

[Jagshund]

From what I've read, Ghostery only looks at javascript issues and any other tracking methods will be ignored. Think I'm using a combination of Ghostery, some privacy.org bookmark thingy and the opt-out option from the Network Advertising Initiative site in regards to cookies. I'm not necessarily moving around the web like a cat, but once I saw the data that Google and Yahoo had collected I wanted to shut 'em down.

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by 1968Cayman

From what I've read, Ghostery only looks at javascript issues and any other tracking methods will be ignored. Think I'm using a combination of Ghostery, some privacy.org bookmark thingy and the opt-out option from the Network Advertising Initiative site in regards to cookies. I'm not necessarily moving around the web like a cat, but once I saw the data that Google and Yahoo had collected I wanted to shut 'em down.

Yea, having the ghostery client box flashing on all that collection data is a real eye opener. To me it looks to be getting a lot more than j-scrpt stuff when it pops up.

[tangerine911S]

I downloaded Ghostery for Safari but it just downloads a file that I don't know what to do with. Its called Ghostery.safafiextz. Couldn't find any info about what to do next.

[john70t]

Using NoScript with the Firefox, but I'm sure there are plenty of other tracking methods

You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again | Epicenter*| Wired.com
Learned about Flash cookies and it's scary stuff, especially since you have to "delete" them off your computer remotely, from the Macromedia website.
This was also why I didn't want to go with OpenOffice, with it's script-based handling.

[URY914]

Big Brother is watching us all....

[Neilk]

Speaking of big brother, you have to wonder what kind of access the 3 letter agencies have with Facebook. Between the face recogniton done by users tagging pictures and people's social networks, there is an amazing amount of knowledge to be gained.

[James Brown]

Did it download to your desk? It won't on mine.

[Gogar]

I 'reset safari' or 'clear private data' on firefox after every use; helps keep things cleaned up.