Break the tracking.

If you're afraid of getting a bad search record with the agencies, that's even more reason to use it, because it pollutes their data bases.

What you should do to prevent the black helicopters following you (great sense for drama, randall3), is use completely innocent rss feeds to initialize the query list.

I decided to try some new add-ons today and this one was a big wtf. It started with searches like "brittany" and "spyware," then went on to repeatedly do searches related to "uranium" and "israel." It's a great tool if you want to be on a no-fly list, and have black helicopters following you.

@tbartbar -- I would think this would be the perfect defense ;-) especially if you keep the logs and can show that it wasn't you that did this, it was TrackMeNot.

NOTE: Dan Howe's "Contact Us" info at mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/ is 404, does anyone have an email for him? I have some suggestions for improvement of TrackMeNot.

I removed this after a day's use. When one uses a search engine s/he may be revealing a few embarrassing tidbits, but this thing makes searches for any number of potentially damning phrases and then goes on to click one of the results returned!
Go ahead and install this if you want your search history to be littered with the searches that can be attributed to anyone from a paedophile to a terrorist, followed by a random click on a result returned for a query like Playing+With+Young+Boys!
I would rather to be tracked by Google or Yahoo than having a search history and web site visits created by TMN!

1984 - I've had this around, but I'd rather fight a while longer for a law banning the Peeping Toms who know more about you than you do with a proper mashup.. There's a difference between important public data (how much did you give that Congressman?) Business Data, send and bill to... and the data that's stolen without even the decency of telling us it's been taken until after it has gone. Still, in a world where a handful of yahoos (Jonathan Swift's, not the company that doesn't know the origin of its own name) are calling for a police state, blaming everything on the latest immigrants (even the legal ones got their doors kicked in for no apparent reason last week), and don't even respect the (uh maybe because he's black?) moderate President, calling him "socialist" (a word they don't seem to understand, at best) it may be time to PUSH THE BUTTON and run browsers 24/7 to confuse the heck out of pro stat stealers.

As an advocate for privacy rights, I am always interested in new technology. However, I would have to decline from recommending this add-on due to the disturbing search queries it produced.
While most were random confusing noise many were potential "flags" if search records were being analyzed. such as; 12 year old, and 12 year old boy. (I'm glad there was not a click through on these). Many other results concerned the Iraqi revolutionary guard; revolutionary guard join, forces and support Iraqi revolutionary guard, Pakistani forces success, and on and on. I understand these are random generations from news stories, however I would not want these in my search logs.
For now, the laws regarding internet activity have been interpreted to mean that there is basically no expectation of privacy. So unfortunately, people should conduct themselves as such until the laws adapt to protect us from warrant less surveillance.

The map with TMN do I copy in the analogue map of Netscape so that TWO browsers energetically do their nasty work.

C\Des\...\Appl.-d.\Mozilla or Netscape\ Firefox or Navigator\Profiles\...&c

Succes!

A lot of people in the world look for required information about it. And, that is achievable to get everything if you come to freelance writer .

Couldn't download or therefore install it. Really wanted to, but computer decided it was incompatible with Firefox 3.5. Quite a shame, really. If you could update it a tiny bit, I'd really appreciate it. Rated what I hoped it would be - don't know realistically, so can't give it full marks...

I was too optimistic. TMN only works for about two days and then it's disabled by Windows XP/FF 3.5.1. Also, v3.5.1 crashes a lot. :-(

There is a corrected update v0.6.2a available on the TrackmeNot web site. I installed it and using it for the past hour and it seems to work fine in FF 3.5.1 for Windows.

@andanotherbrokenhome
That doesn't work.

We need an update.

EDIT: @minidell, it worked on Windows. TrackMeNot 0.6.2 has now been approved on addons.mozilla.org to work with Firefox 3.5, apparently without any changes to the code except for install.rdf. But to make it work, you may have to "update" from 0.6.2 to 0.6.2 by uninstalling and reinstalling from the link on this page.

PRE-EDIT: Until the next official update, it is very easy to make TrackMeNot 0.6.2 compatible with Firefox 3.5. Go to your Firefox profile folder (on Windows this is probably C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\SOMETHINGRANDOM.default\ ) then to the extensions folder, then to the TrackMeNot extension which is probably titled trackmenot@mrl.nyu.edu. In this folder you will find a file called install.rdf. Right-click-and-drag to make a backup copy of it, then open the original install.rdf in a text editor (notepad will do). Look for the part that says 3.0.* and just change it to 3.5.* then save the file under the original name of install.rdf. Now restart Firefox, and TrackMeNot should be working again.

I love this add-on and would like to see it compatible for Firefox 3.5. Authors, can you kindly update the add-on?

This extension does what it claims: it generates queries in a very intelligent way, making it impossible for search engines to build consistent profiles about you and then abuse that data for their own purposes. The RSS feature allows you to enter as many RSS feeds as you like, thus building a huge database of search terms that the engines cannot predict nor easily recognize as artificial. I myself have some 20 different RSS feeds entered into it, from which Trackmenot can draw useful terms that have nothing to do with my own person. My private information is thus hidden inside a cloud of nonsense that Google is welcome to have.

Deleting cookies does not protect your privacy from search engines, because they can identify you by other means, such as IP address. Besides, the deleted cookie is simply recreated every time you use the engine, and for the entire session you will then be monitored.

It is also untrue that search engines will block you. If you use this extension properly (with your own RSS feeds, and by not settting the query frequency at its highest level) you will never, ever be blocked from using the search. I've been using it for two years now and I haven't been blocked even once.

Like an other reviewer said: "In theory this is a GREAT addon. BUT google and other search engines are stopping automated searches and are trying to prevent programs like this from running. Also if you run spyware remover and antivirus and delete your cookies then third parties won't get person information instead of just hiding your searches."

A nice alternative to google is scroogle.org, uses google but: no cookies|no search-term records|access log deleted within 48 hours. There's also an SSL version(AES 256 bit) https://ssl.scroogle.org
Here's a way to install it as a Firefox search engine:
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=scroogle

This is an excellent Add-on and the support is incredible. I have been using it since practically day one.

I thru some of these reviews and am amazed at the lack of knowledge on this. spyware/malware is not what this program is for. search engines do data mining and profiling based on your IP address. scanners/etc dont do anything for this. that is what this is. when google/yahoo/etc have been known to release information(for example to the CHINESE goverment, etc) then its great that someone coded a program like this to combat it. although after a while it will get you black listed with the search engines.

if you think that spyware/malware is even in the same ballpark then you need to google data mining.

In theory this is a GREAT addon. BUT google and other search engines are stopping automated searches and are trying to prevent programs like this from running. Also if you run spyware remover and antivirus and delete your cookies then third parties won't get person information instead of just hiding your searches.

I used it 7x24. Wonderful extension!!! THANKS!!!

I'm sorry if my english is bad but I'm Italian... I've read some of the last comments and I'm not sure that if you use another language than english, for example italian, it's works.
Someone can help me?
Thankyou very much.

I love the add-on. It does not slow my PC down any. As far as one reviewer's comments about turning off cookies and/or using Tor, etc. Nice in theory, but doesn't work well in practice. Many sites will not work if you turn cookies off and many others will not work when running Tor. The situation with these solutions remains that way and so I nixed both of them a long time ago. TMN is a great add-on. And benchmarking and resource usage tools I use show it is virtually no load on the machine. As far as wasting search engines resources, well if they prevented people from tracking search results the comment would be valid. But since they don't, TMN, TMN, TMN.

Will other languages be available? Because if you use another language than english, you can be tracked very easily

There are better ways to protect your privacy than wasting everyone's - not only Google's but also your ISP's etc. - capacities. Just turn off your cookies and/or use proxies or Tor