Adblock Plus

For those who don't know, it seems that Yahoo and Google are making an attempt to allow users to opt out of 3rd-party 'targeted' ads and privacy invasion because the U.S. government is starting to get on their case:

These moves stem from a Congressional inquiry sent to 33 companies including Yahoo and Google which sought to find out more about Internet advertising customization. It’s clear that Congress wants to give consumers more options with regards to their online privacy. (Or at least create an illusion that they are more secure.)

But it seems that writers at InformationWeek and CNet are unimpressed (add me to that list too).

Paraphrasing both articles:
"...we can already do that with Adblock Plus"

More here:
http://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=2278

Thought*
I wonder how you can opt out of privacy if they have to use a cookie to do it?

rick752 wrote:Thought*
I wonder how you can opt out of privacy if they have to use a cookie to do it?

LOL, yea things that make you go hmmmmm.

rick752 wrote:-I wonder how you can opt out of privacy if they have to use a cookie to do it?

I know of at least two ways to keep preferences without permanently accepting a cookie from Google:
1) accept cookie, set preferences, do a search, add a keyword for the search, delete cookie, then just do the searches off the keyword; and,
2) use the "anonymize cookie" setting in the "Customize Google" extension.

One could probably also do the first suggestion but add it to the search bar instead and I understand that there's a bookmarklet that's supposed to let you do the same thing but I'm not sure from the webpage where I found it whether it's broken or not.

Like Deof Movestofca, I use the customize google extension for it's ability to anonymize the google coookie uid. But then, I also have the web developer etension, which I use for doing things quickly w/o having to find them in tools > options > blah blah blah, such as controlling image, scripts, meta refresh, referrers, java, cache, etc. I make sure whenever I can, I have "deny external cookies" on. That seems to help.

And then, I use CS Lite to quickly turn cookies on/off for google.com entirely (of course have google-analytics.com and googlesyndication.com blocked permanently) when I'm not actually using it.

Then I have the greasemonkey script "secure-em-all" force https: connections to ad frames, including google everywhere possible. If you have your certificate settings right in the privacy tab, what happens is ad frames try to auto-refresh with the https: in there and then fail to load. It works on more than google.