But tracking your navigation is NOT mentioned as the danger in the
threat defined at SpyBot. The only threat mentioned is the history, if
you leave it enabled, that resides on your host that someone else could
look at. Also, I'm not sure that version 1 of the Google Toolbar was
directing me through their hosts. This seems a recent problem that I
encountered and suspect that version 2 now does this, but I cannot
download the old version to see what happens with it. Google should
only track your navigation when their Page Ranking and/or Categories
options are enabled, as that is what they claim.

When you install the Google Toolbar, you have 2 options:

Enable advanced features (anonymous information sent to Google)
Disable advanced features (no information sent to Google)

The "advanced" features include the Page Ranking and Categories options
and might include the Page Info option. I uninstalled, cleaned up any
remnant files and registry entries, and reinstalled. This time the URLs
recorded in the log files of my firewall showed the URL that I entered
so they no longer were going to Google's hosts. Okay, so perhaps
something got screwed up in Google. I did have the Categories option
enabled at one time but choose later to disable it and maybe the Google
Toolbar screwed up by not fully disabling that option. So my suspicion
of the Google Toolbar has somewhat been calmed. It does seem rather
stupid that their advanced features which sends "anonymous" information
to
Google has to go through their servers which means you put more between
you and the target site. You'd think they would send that information
in a separate windowless HTTP connection.

However, I still run into the problem that when the Google Toolbar is
installed that I cannot get to some web sites, like
http://www.creative.com or http://www.soundblaster.com. I can get to
http://www.americas.creative.com/ but often the links there will take me
back to one of the other sites that I cannot reach when the Google
Toolbar is installed. So this BHO (browser helper object) is
interfering with my browser's ability to navigate to some web site.
That in itself qualifies its removal.

--
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"Doug" <DeliverSpam@CityDump.Com> wrote in message
news:r6btlvsdh9m326eadjssc682l8oeq5j4q9@4ax.com...
>
> Can't you reason that one out for yourself - Here's a hint. . .
>
> If they can they will and if there's money in it you can damn well bet
> your ass they already are.