Toolbar Anonymity
June 20, 2008 – 10:57 amTwo of the most common Toolbars used by millions of people are Google Toolbar and Alexa Toolbar.
Google Toolbar offers Pagerank information of every website we visit.
That means, if we have Google toolbar installed, and we type yahoo.com in the address bar (without using google’s search engine), Google will still know because the toolbar is checking yahoo.com’s pagerank using Google servers.
This lets google know which websites we visit, even if we don’t use their search engine.
Alexa on the other hand gives its users statistics regarding the websites they visit.
So if I visit yahoo.com and I have Alexa Toolbar, I’ll be able to know how many visitors it has and other statistical information.
And of course, it lets them know which websites the toolbar users visited.
Using that information, Alexa is able to provide more advanced statistics regarding websites. Stuff like geographical percentage of visitors per website and the number of visitors per day (Taken only from its toolbar users).
If anonymity is your primary goal, I suggest you NOT to install the Alexa Toolbar (Its even considered spyware by some security applications).
and I suggest you to disable Google Toolbar Pagerank checker.
2 Responses to “Toolbar Anonymity”
In the tough competition of the search engines, Google being the obvious leader, Alexa is trying every bit to pitch in by introducing more and more lucrative, advantageous and attracting features.
By Alexa hitting the market with more & more user friendly features! on Nov 15, 2008