How can I keep Google from tracking me?

Question

I'm using a VPN service (purevpn) and I notice that google knows my location even when I use noscript and a firefox private window.

Is there something I can do to stop this?

Remark: I'm living in Brazil which official language is Portuguese.

I started a VPN connection using a French server:

I went to http://www.whatismyip.com/ see if the VPN connection is running ok.

Then when I access google it keeps in Portuguese language, how does it know I know portuguese?

Related questions

• Is Google spying on all of us?
• How does Google track a user?

EDIT

My default search engine is Startpage which is very secure, I would like to know how google track me to prevent other sites to do the same.

Answer 1

In my hands, both Chrome's incognito and Firefox's private browsing still send the HTTP header line HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE => 'en-US,en;q=0.5' headers, telling all and sundry that I want American English. I haven't tried all the various plugins you mention, but I would be surprised if any of them block this header.

If you run your own web server, you can see what your browser sends out by a simple CGI script like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI;
use Data::Dumper;
my $cgi=new CGI;
print $cgi->header(), $cgi->start_html();
print $cgi->Dump();
print $cgi->pre(Dumper(\%ENV));

Answer 2

They're probably setting the language based on your system and browser's language setting, not based on your location.

Answer 3

Actually, Google uses various cues to decide what to display, including your IP, HTTP headers, the domain name you typed and your Google account's preferences. I was too lazy to track what it does but I noticed this has changed over the years. I know this because I do not often use the main language of my place of residence, I travel often, and my browsers and Google accounts are configured to ask for various other languages.

A quick test suggests that the domain name redirection (in your case to google.fr) is based on your location (as suggested by your IP) while the language configuration is not based on it. It seems the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header is only honored because Google can't find any cookie or other info. If I go to google.com without clearing cookies after logging with my google account, I get an English-language version, ignoring my browser's configuration. If I go there with a clean browser or in private browsing mode, I get the language that corresponds to my browser's settings. I never get the language that would correspond to my location.

The bottom line is that you don't know that Google is able to track your location.

Also, try visiting http://maps.google.com/ with various IP…