Reviews for TrackMeNot
TrackMeNot by Daniel Howe, Helen Nissenbaum, Janoss
Rated 3.6 out of 5
3.6 Stars out of 5
162 reviews
- by northern_sky, 9 years agoRated 5 out of 5A must have for privacy, combined with Ghostery, Adblock plus, Https everywhere. The only thing missing is the option to add some more search engines to the list. About some earlier comments about sensitive searches sometimes showing up, because the newssites have sensitive word in their feeds - It's the reality, a news feed. eg. new york times. WILL contain some sensitive words If feeling worried about that, change the rssfeed from where the plugin generates querys from to one you trust more - it's easy.
- by RWG, 9 years agoRated 1 out of 5Thanks to bobbybob for pointing out an inconsistency in my original review. Not sure how I missed that, but I did. So today (4-4-12), I'm editing out my mistake. Here is my review: I love the idea of TrackMeNot helping your computer and you get lost in a sea of search queries to help avoid targeting and tracking. As far as I could tell, it executed its mission flawlessly. However, this morning (2-10-12), I noticed one of the search queries was 'police child porn.' That query is a darned good way to draw perhaps unwanted and unfair scrutiny. So I said good-bye to TrackMeNot.
Developer response
posted 9 years agoI understand your concern about TMN sending this type of query. To address this issue we added the possibility to blacklist some keywords in the latest version of TMN (0.7.83). Note that you’ll have to restart your browser once you added keywords to the blacklist as TMN will have to generate a near list of queries. - by WhoeverIam 3000, 9 years agoRated 3 out of 5Tested the Version 0.7.81a in Fx 8.0.1, still can't get it work properly when TMN is enabled, no query is sent out as per its log.
Developer response
posted 9 years agoPlease use the "GetSatisfaction" webpage or contact us via e-mail to report bugs. Ae need further informaiton to correct this bug (like ohter extensions you are using, your OS...).
This review page is not adapted to bug report. - by Erinna Illee, 9 years agoRated 1 out of 5(Update 28.02.2012: Problem's still there, even with FF 10 & updated TMN!)
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Hi! I'm giving this only one star: the idea may be nice, but the developper obviously won't consider bug reports. I'm having the same bug as FFrules 3 months (!) ago: TMN seems to work only once when you start up Firefox, and then stops to work. "No new searches are shown in the status bar. The only way to wake it back up is to disable and re-enable it." I'm adding: when I'm opening the options menu by right-clicking on the TMN icon in the status bar, I can't open my search terms or see the log file. The buttons just don't react.
This way, it's really becoming a privacy issue. While I agree that Bruce Schneier expects something from TMN that it wasn't designed for, this bug now means that TMN becomes a mere privacy theatre: your searches are not just not obfuscated, with this buggy TMN your browser actually becomes an attendance recorder for your IP / browser sessions at AOL, bing, yahoo and google.
Btw., I'm using Win 7 x64, Ff 7.0.1. I'm also using my own RSS feeds, but the problem is the same with the default feeds (checked it). I searched for the log and search term files on my hard disk and checked them: they're still updated whenever I'm starting a browser session. But just one query, and finish.
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Plus another problem: if you use RSS feeds that contain non-english Roman characters - like c-cedille, or German umlauts - those characters will just be deleted from search texts. Now that looks like a characteristic signature for Firefox with buggy TMN installed! It's like sending a calling card: hey, here's someone who tries to obfuscate his searches. This bug, plus the one mentioned above mean that someone with access to search engine company logs 1) knows that this IP uses TMN; and 2) at what times of the day you usually get to start your browsing sessions. Meaning, in big, big letters,
PRIVACY THEATRE! - by fr13del, 9 years agoRated 3 out of 5Is it working only on .com? Or on other TLDs too? Like the national google-sites in .de, .at, .se, whatever?
- by IsThisNicknameTakenToo, 9 years agoRated 5 out of 5Excellent idea, but I would like to see an option for variable frequency in an update. As it stands, the pattern can easily be detected and queries removed at precise intervals to reveal true search queries.
- by FFrules, 10 years agoRated 3 out of 5I was hoping for an add-on like this. Great idea. I used some other RSS feeds than the default ones, since there were unfavorable search terms being picked (I don't need the feds coming to my door because of that - LOL!). However I think I found a bug. TrackMeNot, set at the default search rate of 10 per hour, does a few searches, and then 'quits'. No new searches are shown in the status bar. The only way to wake it back up is to disable and re-enable it. I'm using Firefox 5.0 on Windows 7 64-bit. I'll wait for the next update and see if this gets fixed.
- by rupert1, 10 years agoRated 2 out of 5My system is Fedora Core 14 with Firefox 4.0. It loses points because it appeared to be successfully installed and enabled in FF. despite not doing anything. However, it gains points because I still think it's a cool idea and eagerly await an update for Windows refugees.
Developer response
posted 10 years agoTrackMeNot actually should work properly with firefox 4.0 and linux (at least it works with Ubuntu). The icon may not be visible by default but it works in background. To add the icon in the add-on bar, right click on the bar and select ‘customize’, then drag and drop the TMN icon.The next update (currently reviewed and downloadable by clicking on the ‘View all versions’ link) will do that by default. Furthermore, the version 0.7 (available on TMN website) should fix this as well.
Please report bugs on getstatisfaction or contact us directly. Reviews are not appropraite for that. - by moskoso, 10 years agoRated 3 out of 5this extensions sends code to third sites and it is clearly designed with oither purposes by spreading a number of pre-determined chains despite your apparent changes.You must decompress the code and investigate it. The algorithm is quite useful to make noise... After some easy modifications in the main .js and deactiving updates, the extension finally is quite good ;)
- by finger_man, 10 years agoRated 5 out of 5Excellent product IFF you change the default RSS feeds; I recommend using DRUGS.COM; MONEYWATCH; and NPR.ORG (some commercial sites good .gov nooo). That'll take care of the 'weird I-don't-want-that-search-from-my-IP' issue)(also helps 'skew' commercial reverse-cloud sales). Would be nicer if the "seed" query would auto-update from time-to-time instead of a FF reload. Yeah, save the logs (an auto ver of that'd be nice too).
- by doodlebug123, 10 years agoRated 1 out of 5Tried it for an hour and started getting "searches" that were counter productive, such as "sex com 13" "Cheerleader" Found it too difficult to change the RSS feed so it's probably my fault.
- by keefer72, 11 years agoRated 1 out of 5I like it at first but then I kept noticing concerning search phrase like, "marijuana", "big t*ts", "terrorizing" among others.
- by lksdfjlsmchnalskdhfncaushfnuashdkfumhcskd, 11 years agoRated 5 out of 5This is an excellent add-on. It seems to work exactly as advertised.
I have a couple of suggestions for the developers:
1. Help users choose RSS feeds for generating queries. Different users have different requirements: To obscure bland search behaviors, mainstream feeds (like your defaults) probably work best, but to obscure more adventurous search behaviors, it will probably be necessary to add several "interesting" feeds to the mix. I just spent some time looking for unusual RSS feeds, and I found some good ones which I'm now using in TMN. If these feeds work as I expect, the search engines will soon conclude that I have dozens of remarkable (albeit contradictory) interests, and my true interests will be lost in the noise. Anyway, it was work to find these feeds, and if you were to host a forum for the purpose of discussing TMN query feeds -- or at least post a list of suggested feeds -- I think it would greatly help users effectively configure TMN.
2. Why not obscure browsing behavior too? Logging search queries is just one way Google (and others) keep track of us. Many websites report to Google the IP addresses of those who visit their pages. Thus, a good portion of our browsing behavior is tracked by Google, even if we never use Google to search. Fortunately, I think TMN could easily obscure browsing behavior in addition to search behavior. The program simply needs to remember some of the websites it visited as part of the click-through feature, then continue to visit those sites at semi-regular intervals. Please think about it.
-TC - by jilsve, 11 years agoRated 3 out of 5Logs and Help/FAQ doesn't work in Firefox for Linux. AFAIK, it has never worked with features that opens new windows. Currently using Firefox 3.6.3 in Ubuntu, but it has been the same in other versions too.
Also, for Google, it should be possible to specify which domain to use, for example, it should use google.se instead of google.com for Sweden, since that's what is used when doing manual searches. Currently, this makes it extremely easy to determine which traffic is real and which is generated by TrackMeNot. - by artistabinario, 11 years agoRated 4 out of 5Polluting databases is a great idea, but I would do some improvements having in mind non-english users. Even if I initialize the list with some rss in my own language, TMN will always add to the query list some popular terms such as 'naruto', 'angelina jolie' and whatever. If I do google searches 90% of the time on a foreign language, it's probably trivial for a tracking program to discard what it seems to be garbage. And since the terms seem to be hardcoded, the only workaround is to edit the query list manually, but you have to do it each time you open the browser so it's pointless. Thanks.
- by freecomputer12, 11 years agoRated 5 out of 5I used to use Fakir which was available through a geocities page that was deleted with all the rest. This seems to actually be better than Fakir although I think a more powerful AI will be needed soon to provide what is needed as far as privacy is concerned, would like better control on adding some of the search terms as well as deleting what I don't like, but this is far better than nothing at all. Remember this type of program not only helps protect your privacy but helps invalidate all user results for everyone online, and so is a start toward a new level of privacy than has existed up to now!
- by developer, 11 years agoRated 5 out of 5We have enough commercial profiling going on in today's world. Here's away to confound it online. It really is a terrific extension. Thank you for working on it.
- by Josh_Uil, 11 years agoRated 1 out of 5Google did ban my IP after five months TMN-working on two browsers, Firefox and Netscape, they did believe me a botnet terrorized them... I uninstalled the TMN ad-ones and after two hours Google was reached again.
- by sodQ9, 11 years agoRated 5 out of 5Does exactly as advertised. Great add-on.
To the developers, I would suggest tuning down the default (the default seems a little excessive since many people leave their browsers running for extended periods of time). To users, make sure to turn down the query frequency. - by Sighurt, 11 years agoRated 4 out of 5If 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. - by randall3, 11 years agoRated 1 out of 5I 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.