Google's Toolbar is Spyware

With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf,
and yes, it reads your cookie too.

Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this.

Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google
(which is many times a day).
Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk. (POTENTIALLY)

Risks of Auto Update Software

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With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S.,
Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

Just dont enable the advanced features, why would you anyways? I could care less if they see where I go as well.. and if you dont like it dont use it! It is FREE by the way....

I am having a simular issue with Netzero. The dialup software used to prompt before an update. I can respect that. That is no longer the case, it updates the moment you log on, which eats a lot of bandwidth, quite an annoyance for dial-up. If I was just using the free hours, it would be a big deal, however they do this with their premium services too. I really appreaciate the heads up about the google tool-bar, this I did not suspect.

I think this is just a good common sense warning. I personally don't use any of these add in toolbars like google's, because I have found most of them to contain spyware.

Best thing people can do is to set IE to NOT automatically except cookies, and prompt for each one. Most people would be surprised as to what some sites try to sneak past you.

You couldn't tell me how to do that could you friend, I can't find it in the IE settings

I'm curious as to why you think cookies are a bad thing?

I don't even see why people like having a third party toolbar....I go for maximum display - I hate a cluttered window - Nothings really bad with cookies either, so long as you set your security level to an acceptable zone, have a firewall and do a little spring cleaning every so often....

Is there a safe alternative to replace the Google toolbar? I mostly use it to highlight words I want to identify on a web page, I love this feature.

If I create a thread I will type “kinglizard” into the Google toolbar and press the highlight button. This way I don’t need to really look to see if it received replies because my name will be bright yellow on the thread and allows me to easily identify it when it is bumped to the top of "recent posts".

I must say that I have noticed my browser slowing down especially when I initially open the browser. I wonder if this is due to the toolbar????

SO: Not all cookies are bad! Just the cookies you don't expect are. If you go to MSNBC, and it tries to set a cookie from Orbitz, that's bad, and it happens.

earthtone:
Go to Tools --> Internet Options. Select the Privacy tab. In the middle of the dialog box, click the Advanced button. Then set as follows.
external image
This let's good cookies in, and prompts you about others. Some people will begin to get annoyed by the constant Privacy alert, but after a few months, you will have most of the bad cookies permanently blocked.