Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Magisterarbeit - SemanticLab

Figure 5.7.: Logging in onto www.nytimes.com by using BugMeNot
5.2.5. TrackMeNot
TrackMeNot tries to protect users against profiling of search engines by randomly fire off
queries to search engines in the background while surfing the Internet. The tool not just
generates a lot of traffic in the background, it can also be questioned if it actually works
as search engines probably have ways to differ automatically from manually submitted
queries. If users want to make sure that their search queries are totally anonymized,
they should use an extension such as Private Web Search or a proxy as described next.
5.2.6. Private Web Search (PWS)
Private Web Search (PWS) is a Firefox extension that acts as a proxy to anonymize
users’ search queries. Technically seen it acts as an HTTP proxy which filters the HTTP
request. It then sends the search query to the search engine via the Tor anonymity
network. The HTTP Proxy receives the answer from the Tor network and then returns
the results back to PWS. The result is a normal answer to a search query but no sensitive
(e.g. personal identifiable) information should have been transfered to the search engine.
[Sai07] describes PWS and the technical background in more detail. Unfortunately the
extension could not be evaluated due to difficulties to install and setup PWS.
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