On further inspection with firefox, I noticed it's still dialing home to google
not only that, but if I block it from dialing home to google I can no longer browse. My findings using outpost indicated it's dialing to sb.google.com
but if I block sb.google.com using outpost firewall custom rule, it then renders firefox useless and one can't even browse anything except :blank.
So does firefox need sb.google.com to run ? It seems so and im very annoyed lol.

Can anyone else clarify my findings ? as I haven't seen anyone mentioning about this anywhere.

I dont need google, I never did, and I dont want it in my friggin firefox

I have never used google and never needed it.
http://www.copernic.com/en/products/agent/download.html

find this video.

Master Plan about the power of Google:

http://de.sevenload.com/videos/lyOnun9/Mas...power-of-Google

Sabu

Just thought you might want to know I block this range:



67.24.0.0-67.31.255.255 Level 3 Communications (Fed Ex email)
I have blocked this range because email from fedex connects to this server for all the other purposes FedEx deems necessary other than to deliver an email.

209.11.0.0-209.11.233.255 Globix Corporation (Fed Ex email)
This one also connects when email is recieved from Fed Ex and you have blocked the first one.

Excuse me Sabu for messing up your post. The above info (on ip ranges) was met for the poster below i.e: The Copernic alternative posted by "xpy" Many Pardons.
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php...ost&p=78415

While the search engines give your IP and other info away, and Google loses its fight with the govt, dont you think you should search by proxy?

Black Box searches return proxied results, which (if you dont click on too much ad junk) will not create any tracking cookies on your machine, nor reveal your IP address when typing in the search.

You can freely navigate the links for the result pages through our proxy. (Notice the blackbox link at the top of the page when you click on the next search results) You can also use the search boxes on the results pages to quickly do another search.

The Bush administration could takeover Google if Bush decided to write up some new bill and Google refused to cooperate. Its that simple.

hxxp://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/update?client=navclient-auto-ffox&appver=2.0.0.7& etc etc

sb.google.com - 74.125.19.91

Firefox 2.0 incorporates the Google Safe Browsing extension in its own Phishing Protection feature to detect and warn users of phishy web sites. This preference, along with browser.safebrowsing.remoteLookups, determines whether or not the Safe Browsing functionality is active.

[edit]Possible values and their effects
[edit]True
Compare visited URLs against a blacklist or submit URLs to a third party to determine whether a site is legitimate. (Default)

[edit]False
Disable Safe Browsing.

Mozilla Firefox
A checkbox labeled “Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery” is located under “Tools → Options → Security”. [ Disable that sucker ! ]

To disable automatic Web site checking:

Within Internet Explorer, click Internet Options from the Tools menu.
Click the Advanced tab.
Under the phishing filter, select Turn off automatic Website checking.
Click OK.

There is a normal cycle when a new phishing site is created. It works something like this:

* A new phishing site is created and is e-mailed about to thousands of people.
* Someone tips off Google, which adds it to the phishing blacklist.
* Millions of Firefox browsers download the latest blacklist from Google.
* Users who click on e-mails, taking them to the phishing site, receive a clear warning from Firefox, telling them that the site is malicious.

However, what happens when the phishing site is hosted by Google?

This very issue was discussed by noted Web application security expert Robert "RSnake" Hansen in August. RSnake discovered a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in Google's gmodules.com Web site. The security flaw, which has yet to be fixed, was dismissed by the Google security team, which claimed that it was, in fact, an intended design feature.

RSnake described the significance of the vulnerability, stating that the exploit would allow someone "to take over other people's Web sites when they embedded the erroneous third-party code. Kinda nasty. Unlikely, but nasty. More likely, it would simply be in phishing sites that didn't want their sites taken down, but wanted Google's to be taken down instead."

This brings us to a really interesting dilemma. Google has a well-known flaw in one of its Web sites that can be (ab)used by phishers and malicious hackers. Google refuses to fix the flaw, as it believes that it is not a problem. Google also operates the Firefox phishing blacklist. Will Google add one of its own domains to the phishing blacklist? Of course not!

RSnake, who worked in the antiphishing blacklist area for some time, makes several claims. On his blog, he wrote that "the browser companies have to maintain a list of sites that aren't phishing sites but often get flagged as phishing sites. Google happens to host a lot of those.

In reality, Google is being used to phish consumers or redirect to them to phishing sites, but Google doesn't really fix this problem. Instead, it tells the browser companies to whitelist its sites, regardless of the fact that consumers are losing their identities as a direct result of Google's actions in two ways: 1) because it has not ended the vulnerability and 2) because of its insistence in being marked as a 'good' site."

Essentially, what he claims is that with Google's rather menacing legal department, no other competing antiphishing company will dare to include a Google-owned domain on a blacklist. In addition, Google's domains get included on a whitelist shipped with antiphishing software, which is a list of domains that will never cause warnings.

RSnake further claims that in addition to intimidating the other firms in the market, Google refuses to include its own Web properties in the Firefox phishing blacklist, which it maintains.

While RSnake does nothing to hide his lack of love for the big G, his reputation in the Web application security arena is top-notch. Furthermore, in the two months since RSnake first made his concerns public, no one from Google has publicly disputed anything he has said.

With Google providing the blacklists for the new antimalware features in Firefox 3.0, we should all be asking: Can we trust Google? To paraphrase the old phrase, who will blacklist the blacklisters? With control of hundreds of millions of Firefox browsers, what incentive does Google have to keep its own Web properties free of phishing sites?

Google’s overall goal is to have a record of every e-mail we have ever written, every contact whose details we have recorded, every file we have created, every picture we have taken and saved, every appointment we have made, every website we have visited, every search query we have typed into its home page, every ad we have clicked on, and everything we have bought online.

It wants to know and record where we have been and, thanks to our search history of airlines, car-hire firms and MapQuest, where we are going in the future and when...

TrackMeNot runs in Firefox as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It hides users' actual search trails in a cloud of 'ghost' queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles.

Very interesting.

Well, I delete all my cookies multiple times a day, and never use any toolbars.
I thought the Google Toolbar seemed kind of fishey, and I was starting to doubt my own doubts until I heard it phones home.

Well, this reminds me of a company that my company works with and helping them get off their feet.
They are search engine programmers that may very well be Google's next competition.

-- Xero Grid --