Doofus - 11:02 pm on Jan 7, 2002 (gmt 0)

Caution: PRmaster sends a unique ID

The author of PRmaster apparently copied his own Google handshaking dialog into his program. As a result, his unique cookie ID is sent to Google every time his program is used. This ID is hardwired into his program.

I assume that this was an innocent mistake. But it means that Google can track who's using this program. This is insane, as you don't have to have a Google cookie in order to get a PR back from Google.

Here's what to do -- you need a Hex editor:

Find the place in PRmaster.exe where it says: Cookie: PREF=ID=[followed by 16 hex characters]:TB=1:LD=en: TM=[10 digits]:LM=[10 digits]:S=[11 chars] NULL cr/lf/cr/lf

Now write Hex 00 (NULL) over all this, starting with "Cookie" and up to but not including the cr/lf/cr/lf

Now it won't send out this unique ID during the dialog. It's about ten times faster, and the same PR comes back.