How to Prevent Being Indexed By Search Engines.

[Guest]

Hi there,

I wanted to know if it was possible to prevent my account from being indexed by search engines such as Google, is this possible?

I know it's a bit of an odd question.

[Jetset408 108]

Agreed. Would love to know. It's a gross invasion of privacy!

[John_Cillis 2,406]

There are ways, you have to go into your browser options and set your cookies on the websites you restrict to session only.  Avsim is one of the only websites I trust to keep cookies on my system after my session ends, along with some email providers. Much as sites hate it, I also use Adblock Plus on certain websites, I allow ads on others, like CBS which I watched tonight.  I pick and choose according to the content provided, but normally, session only is the rule.  On some websites I prohibit cookies altogether, such as those that try to charge for use after a certain period of time.   My feeling is if they display the content, it is their responsibility to provide a secure means to restrict it, not mine.  Forgot to add, I only use Mozilla Firefox, even though Microsoft recommends edge.  I avoid Chrome and Edge.

John

[Oracle427 45]

As long as the content can be publicly accessed, it's going to get indexed. There are crawlers running 24/7 going through everything on a site. In near real time the data is uploaded to the search engines and will appear in their results. It would be hard to defend this as an invasion of privacy if the information can be readily accessed without even having to log in.

Cookies are a different matter.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

27 minutes ago, Oracle427 said:

As long as the content can be publicly accessed, it's going to get indexed. There are crawlers running 24/7 going through everything on a site. In near real time the data is uploaded to the search engines and will appear in their results. It would be hard to defend this as an invasion of privacy if the information can be readily accessed without even having to log in.

Cookies are a different matter.

Explain indexing for me, I'd like to learn more about it.

John

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

1 hour ago, Oracle427 said:

As long as the content can be publicly accessed, it's going to get indexed. There are crawlers running 24/7 going through everything on a site. In near real time the data is uploaded to the search engines and will appear in their results. It would be hard to defend this as an invasion of privacy if the information can be readily accessed without even having to log in.

Cookies are a different matter.

That is absolutely true.

There is so much tech behind data mining that we're simply never going to get around it.

Several years ago I wrote a post where I explained to some younger flight simmer trolls that their future job prospects could be influenced by what they posted online, even if they never used their real name in their posts and still likely if they used a VPN to provide different IP Addresses that they shift around (doubtful).  About a year later a professional article was written that said the same thing (there are now several such articles available online).  Not all search engines can correlate at this level (and I'm not going to explain it) but Google most certainly can, and they make money by selling that type of info to companies.  This isn't some conspiracy theory, it's not any type of secret - it's in the public domain and it's been going on for years.  There have even been people fired from their existing jobs for trolling or other bad behavior, usually when they apply for a more senior job at their company that triggers their employer to perform a background check.

Now, I'm sure people won't believe this, but, well, Google is your friend on this (and only this.... LOL).

 

Best wishes to everyone.

 

[Oracle427 45]

There are crawlers and robots all over the net that are tasked with parsing through the content of websites and feeding this data back to whatever data storage later they point to.

These are distributed processes that run in parallel to discover, parse and create an index of the site content.

There are also robots that are malicious and are designed to discover and attack vulnerabilities on websites.

On a website that I manage I can monitor the activity of the robots, and I can take a few steps to throttle back their activity to stop them from impacting the performance of the site. I can also suggest that some content not be indexed, but there is very little control over that.

In the end it is fair to assume that if the content is pubicly accessible, it is going to make its way into the great big search engine cloud. Once there the indexing algorithms of the search engines will analyze the data to optimize search results.

The search engines are searching through data that their robots have parsed through over days and weeks. They are not actively hitting every website on the net in real time.

[Oracle427 45]

20 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

There have even been people fired from their existing jobs for trolling or other bad behavior, usually when they apply for a more senior job at their company that triggers their employer to perform a background check.

So true! I work on corporate systems that manage problem cases related to social media (external) in addition to all the other ways that staff can get themselves in trouble internally.

It is amazing how much can be learned about one using these tools. I do not have access to the data, but I understand how it works as I am involved in the design.

Be nice!

[Guest]

I assumed that this wouldn't be possible but thanks anyway for the discussion and the knowledge that has been provided as a result.

Nothing too big of a deal - and search engines really don't index flight sim forums such as Avsim unless you are determined to find the smallest leads. :)

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

6 hours ago, VHOEI said:

search engines really don't index flight sim forums such as Avsim unless you are determined to find the smallest leads

Oh yes, they absolutely and most certainly do.  While it doesn't really demonstrate the full depth to which flight sim forums are indexed, you'll find that Google to search for flight sim related matters is actually far better and more accurate than using individual forum searches.

 

 

[bic 44]

On 10/17/2017 at 10:18 AM, DaveCT2003 said:

That is absolutely true.

There is so much tech behind data mining that we're simply never going to get around it.

Several years ago I wrote a post where I explained to some younger flight simmer trolls that their future job prospects could be influenced by what they posted online, even if they never used their real name in their posts and still likely if they used a VPN to provide different IP Addresses that they shift around (doubtful).  About a year later a professional article was written that said the same thing (there are now several such articles available online).  Not all search engines can correlate at this level (and I'm not going to explain it) but Google most certainly can, and they make money by selling that type of info to companies.  This isn't some conspiracy theory, it's not any type of secret - it's in the public domain and it's been going on for years.  There have even been people fired from their existing jobs for trolling or other bad behavior, usually when they apply for a more senior job at their company that triggers their employer to perform a background check.

Now, I'm sure people won't believe this, but, well, Google is your friend on this (and only this.... LOL).

 

Best wishes to everyone.

 

I saw something this past year that even though you clear cookies yada, that your browser has a uniqueid that identifies you, so they can still track you. 

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

2 minutes ago, bic said:

I saw something this past year that even though you clear cookies yada, that your browser has a uniqueid that identifies you, so they can still track you. 

In some cases web based services (not just websites) can track the ID of your processor (or at least it used to be done, haven't looked at that in the past 10 years).

There are browsers available that do a good job of limiting or proving little to no information. Doesn't really matter though, because the algorithms used for correlation use SOOOOO much more to correlate, identify and link data from around the web.

The best privacy based browser I know of is Tor, and I strongly recommend it for those concerned with online privacy (I don't use it, I simply use Firefox).  Quote from their website:

"Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security."

While i recommend Tor, is might well recommend Comodo's Dragon or Ice Dragon for those who don't have a robust complete Internet Security suite (which is MUCH more than just an anti-virus and is also freeware and VERY HIGHLY RATED when compared against payware security suites) running on their computer as these browsers will need to interface with Comodo's freeware Internet Computer Security Suite.  Read a view of this and the Tor browser HERE.

Best wishes.