Google

Google

The spyware researcher and Harvard B-School professor has demonstrated that the Google Toolbar continues to track a user’s searches even after the user has explicitly disabled it.

Edelman has plenty of other criticism for Google: He details tests which show that, even after the user disables “Google Toolbar” using the IE Manage Add-ons feature, it continues to report. The only possible explanation of this is that the monitoring components of Google Toolbar do not run as part of that Add-on. Perhaps there is a second add-on, not named as clearly, which Edelman didn’t notice. I’d test it myself, but I long-ago swore never to install the Google Toolbar ever again.

Edelman also shows how it’s too easy to enable the “Enhanced Features” which cause the transmission of full browsing details to Google, and it’s not all that easy to disable them. Google forcefully urges you to activate them and tells you how important they are. At the same time they present the privacy policy in a way that’s difficult to read.

He concludes with advice for how Google should address the problems he describes, much of which has to do with improving their disclosure.

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