Category Archives: Privacy

3 Good Reasons to persist in using Google ncr = no country redirect

Image from: marketing-partners.com

Since some weeks ago, I used:

for my web search and I was able to open the main Google Homepage without to be redirected to any local Goole site.

What I usually obtained was:

1 – less “personalized” search results: the algorithm will be not “contaminated” by my local IP and I will able to find information “cleaned” by local trends;

2 – the possibility to use the “same” Google even when I am abroad;

3 – the security that my searches were always up-to-date respect the global actual trends. For my experience when I search some particular topics as “marketing” I obtain, in the first Google page, fresh news only using Google in its NCR version. If I try to use my local Google homepage I have to spend more time setting the Google’s “advanced search” or trying to understand what information are “really” fresh new.

Image from: mods2015.com

I found the right solution when I visited ycombinator.com and I found the post created by newman314 that submitted a link that combined NCR and SSL protocol (for a little bit of more privacy).

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=test&qscrl=1&n…

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=test&qscrl=1&ncr=1

Where the word “test” is what I am looking for.

Then I also found a faster solution by dragop:

http://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&gws_rd=cr

and, in the same webpage, a shorter version from 3dfan:

http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr

On my side I prefer to use this other URL that gives me the same results through an SSL connection:

https://encrypted.google.com

To be sure that the results were really the same and not simply related with the English language and influenced by the IP, I tested this URL comparing them from what I obtained from the above mentioned:

http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr

I discovered that what I “received” using encrypted.google.com are really the same links and they are not just the standard local results in the English language.

I know that cookies will not allow me to have real “septic” results but this is the first step to a less passive use of Google search because I would like to be a more active user and not just a passive customer pampered by Google.

Protect your Privacy: use a Self-destructing, single-use File Sharing Service

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Link

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Synkron: a flexible & powerful way to synchronize your files or folders on Linux – An “encrypted” example for security and privacy reasons

2 Replies

Sometimes it is really easy, other times you waste your time. A good synchronization between files or folders is something you need everyday but it could become a nightmare if you miss something.

In my specific case I need to automate a synchronization between a folder (F1) where I usually save my office files (Documents) with a second folder contained, for security reasons, in an encrypted volume/partition (F2). This last folder (F2) automatically synchronize its content with a third folder (F3), located in the same encrypted volume/partition, that is the client folder of a remote storage hosting (F4).

This also means that when I am out of the office and I add a file in the online storage host (F4) the document is automatically copied to the client folder of the remote storage hosting and to the folder located in an encrypted volume/partition (F2 and F3).

Moreover, I need to erase the Documents folder F1 as soon as it is synchronized with its mirror F2 in the encrypted volume.

The described scenario is common in the everyday working life and it is conceptually not hard to solve… in theory… When I tried to set up the above described operations using grsync on Fedora and Ubuntu I had big problems to obtain an acceptable result.

Many times the synchronization was unidirectional and I was not able to run it properly just using grsync still I found one right solution with Synkron. Synkron is a multi platform software (Linux, OSX, Windows and portable) written in C++ that is really flexible for all multitasking synchronization needs.

First of all, Synkron is multi-tab and this is a winning features because it let you to “slice” any problem (synchronization matter) into simple, easy to solve, tasks.

In my example I determined the two Folders I wanted to sync – F1 & F2) and decided thath both folders had to be considered as Master by the software.

Then I used the Advanced Menu and I chose to “Move contents to Folder 2, leaving folder 1 empty” and to “Store database in a text file” for my convenience (F1 to F2 deleting F1 contents after synchronization).

At this point, I opened a second synchronization tab where I selected two folders (F2 to F3 sync) and I also asked Synkron to “Synchronize hidden files and folders” and to “Detect collisions”.

At this point I had obtained an acceptable solution to my initial task, simply dividing my problem into two separate operations.

Moreover, I’ld like to focus your attention on the fact that Synkron has a specific feature for multi-synchronizing three or more folders at the same tome. The tuning of this particular feature is really intuitive and you can also selected many of the different advanced options we described here above.

If you have complex synchronization needs and you have many tabs configured you can always choose what tabs you want to activate or deactivate using the “Sync folders” option you find in the upper part of each tabs. Another option for this specific issue is represented by the SyncView visualization that let ypu to have a quick general glimpse about the state of all the sync and multisync tabs.