Since yesterday, whenever I connect to the forum for the first time that day, I get the following indentification certificate (see attachment). It's in French, because of my OS. Here's what it says:
Something must be up with their ads. I haven't gotten it here, but I got a similar notification at a couple of other sites that run AdSense.
I just found this very interesting CNN article in my RSS reader: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/09/opinion/ghitis-google-privacy/
As much as I had dismissed the notice on Google sites (see the CNN note at the top of the article) to begin with, I once got curious and went to see what it was about.
Apparently, here in Europe, the European Commission is already on this kind of practice, which I hope they can stop, as I profoundly dislike Big Brother (whomever that may be) watching me.
I can only recommand everybody to read the article.
The European Commission probably wants monopoly on spying and censorship.
They'd probably wish, but they are not alone in that. With all the social networks around, it's a big political means to measure and control people. And I can know!
Anyway, yesterday I deleted all Google cookies in my browser and this morning the forum loaded as usual, w/o a dialog.
How do you think the cookies caused this? I'm pretty confused when it comes to security certificates and how they work.
If you haven't already, consider signing the petition against ACTA. More than 2 million signatures so far. Sometimes the net still is pretty wonderful.
http://avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/
Just noticed that Google search results link to jumper pages openly (in the HTML source) now. Previously, links in the HTML source pointed directly to the web sites in the search result (so that everything looked normal in your status bar when hovering over a link) and were only rewritten with javascript once you clicked on them. The actual redirect from the jumper page to the web site was so fast that I almost never saw it with my own eyes (maybe they dropped it because such fast performance became too expensive). Don't know what is worse --that Google tried to hide the practice before, or that I can't sabotage the snooping anymore by disabling javascript.
Jumper pages? Is that when they have a honey trap page with lot of juicy text for SEs that redirects to the real page?
I don't understand either. Anyway, that's different from security certificates.
Ah, but they would know that one way or another anyway. Isn't that kind of expected?
You chose a sample site that's somewhat fishy with redirection pages of its own. And no, it's not mine. But I wouldn't mind the domain.
I meant they don't need to use a HTML page and I don't know why they do. But who am I to question Google technology?
The sites I got the alert as weren't https either. But surely it must be the ads? How else would google come into it?
Could it be https ad pages in iframes? I've disabled ads so I can't check.
Or could it be malware ads disguised as legitimate alerts? Can't say from the screen capture.
The screenshot was made when the forum page opened, after having clicked its link from inside Safari's topsites, as I usually do. Then this dialog popped up. I only clicked to show the content of the certificate.
Does the forum have "https ad pages in iframes" or "malware ads"? I doubt that.
Anyway, it's gone now. I just wanted to see if others had the same (or similar issues.
BTW, how did you disable ads?
For Safari there must be some extension to do that. I'll have to wait until I have the time to install my new Mac Mini (yeah, I'm finally upgrading from Tiger ).
On windows you can use the hosts file. Don't know if Mac have something similar. Or of course some program that filters web content for you. There are browser extensions too, me thinks.
A hosts file? What's that?
I used to have Safari Stand installed, but that wouldn't work anymore in the latest Safari on Tiger. There's a new version for Safari 5 /Leopard or Lion. Maybe it doesn't block all ads, but it has cool features.
For the moment, I have Flash content turned off, with a Simbl plugin, which is already a relief and which I can turn on on demand.
'hosts' is a Windows file that maps domains to IP addresses. I suspect it's a remnant from the time these things took time. I once had a tool that speeded up surfing by caching IP addresses for selected sites, i.e. it was an interface to the hosts file. You can use it to map ad servers to 127.0.0.1 .
It's just a text file that looks like this when unedited.
Thank you both.
I'll stick to Safari, which has always been my favorite browser.
That hosts file looks like some .ini file (Apache or PHP).
Windows use inis too. Which is IMHO a much better option than the registry.
There's a https://extensions.apple.com/ "Ad Block" which blocks all ads on all pages.
It's so effective, I forgot I had it installed. I was complaining to Adwords support that my ads weren't showing up, and (to my embarassment) he asked me if I had AdBlock installed.
Thanks, Jim. But extensions don't work in Safari on Tiger.
I'm busy installing my new Mac mini, with Lion. So then I'll be able to add extensions to Safari.
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