(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!

Is it working only on .com? Or on other TLDs too? Like the national google-sites in .de, .at, .se, whatever?

Excellent 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.

I 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.

Good idea, works perfectly, thanks!

My 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.

Please update to work with Firefox version 4+
:)

this 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 ;)

Excellent 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).

Great.

Tried 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.

I like it at first but then I kept noticing concerning search phrase like, "marijuana", "big t*ts", "terrorizing" among others.

This 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

Logs 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.

Polluting 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.

I 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!

We 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.

Google 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.

Does 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.

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.