How to delete your Google browsing history in three simple steps . . . before it's too late to hide your secrets

There is just a week to go until Google controversially changes its privacy policy to allow it to gather, store and use personal information about its users.

But there is one way to stymie the web giant's attempts to build a permanent profile of you that could include personal information including age, gender and locality.

The new policy, which has been criticised by privacy campaigners who have filed a complaint to U.S. regulators, comes into affect on March 1.

But before that date you can delete your browsing history and, which will limit the extent to which Google records your every move - including your embarrassing secrets. Here's how:

1. Go to the Google homepage and sign into your account. Use the dropdown menu under your name in the upper right-hand corner to access your settings. Click on 'account settings', like below. Google

2. Next, find the section called 'Services' and you'll see a link to 'View, enable, or disable web history', shown in the red box below. Click on it. Google

3. Finally, you can remove all of your search details by clicking on 'Remove Web History', shown in the red box below. Once you have done this your history will remain disabled until you turn it back on. Google

Although disabling web history will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes, it does mean the Web giant will anonymise the data in 18 months.

It will also prevent it from certain kinds of uses, including sending you customised search results.

Read more: Daily Mail

Digital devices and the question of privacy

As we become more and more dependent upon digital devices (Blackberry, Ipad, Android, computer) to store personal information, most of us take for granted that the information is private. But is it?

On January 24, 2012, Google announced it was changing its privacy policies. Instead of a policy for each individual product (YouTube, Gmail, Google search, Picasa), all 60 Google services will now be covered by a blanket policy, one that is a lot shorter and easier to read.

And for the first time, information across all platforms will be combined to create a fuller portrait of users. Ostensibly, the move will help Google better tailor ads to people’s tastes. Google says they’ll never sell your personal information, or share it, without permission.

Simple enough …but the fact that users cannot “opt out,” and given Google’s checkered past regarding privacy issues, serious concerns are being expressed by privacy experts, federal agencies and congressional lawmakers.

Read more: Fox News

Obama Quiet as UN & Dictators Push to Control Internet

A new effort to hand control over the Internet to the United Nations is underway as oppressive regimes such as the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China clamor for more censorship and regulation of the World Wide Web.

The Obama administration has remained silent so far, having failed to even select a leader to defend U.S. interests at upcoming talks on the subject. But critics of the global move are already striking back, warning that transferring Internet governance to the UN would be a massive blow to freedom and prosperity for the whole planet.

Today, the online world is largely governed and regulated by a decentralized network of non-profit groups, most of which are based in America where the Internet was born. And private-sector interests — companies such as Google, Facebook, and others — still dominate the web at present.

The “multi-stakeholder” approach, as it is known, has kept the Internet free in most of the world for over a decade while revolutionizing business, information, communications, and even civilization itself. But all of that could change soon, at least if despots of various varieties — from communists in Beijing to Islamists in Tehran — get their way.

Later this month in Geneva, Switzerland, governments will gather to begin negotiations on a potential treaty that could crush the free flow of information online, according to experts. The diplomatic process will help lay the foundation for the upcoming “World Conference on International Telecommunications” in Dubai at the end of the year.

Under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN body, a collection of mostly dictatorial regimes is expected to push for a complete overhaul of existing Internet governance. Everything from pay structures and rates to cyber security and data protection could end up under an international regime, according to experts.

Source: The New American

New Tools For Rewriting The Code Of Life, Enables Creating Artificial Life Forms

MIT and Harvard researchers have developed technologies that could be used to rewrite the genetic code of a living cell, allowing them to make large-scale edits to the cell’s genome. Such technology could enable scientists to design cells that build proteins not found in nature, or engineer bacteria that are resistant to any type of viral infection.

The technology, described in the July 15 issue ofScience, can overwrite specific DNA sequences throughout the genome, similar to the find-and-replace function in word-processing programs. Using this approach, the researchers can make hundreds of targeted edits to the genome of E. coli, apparently without disrupting the cells’ function.

Source: Nano Patents and Innovations

First Photos of China’s 298-Million-Year-Old Buried Forest

These are the first photos of some of the countless treasures found in the extraordinary 298-million-year-old forest discovered under coal mine in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China.

The beautiful images show "the exceptional preservation of the fossil plants of the peat-forming swamp forest." The research team has found entire plants and trees, allowing them to confirm previously published reconstructions. It's also the first time ever that they have found fossilized tree and plant communities arranged in a forest.

A volcanic eruption buried the entire forest under ash, preserving it in this exquisite state, never seen before. The lead scientists classify it as a "Permian vegetational Pompeii" in the title of their research. According to University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn, it's an extraordinary "time capsule."

Read more with pictures: Gizmodo