Many SEOs become paranoid over time that Google is watching their activity and tracing the sites they track and then punishing them. I've never seen any hard proof of this, but there are steps to take if you've become too paranoid to check your search rankings.Nick W of Threadwatch fame posted a doozy of a system for dodging trace-ability on the web using some very sophisticated, albeit dodgy techniques. Check out the full thread - 007 Stealth Browsing with FireFox/Moz.
It was much better at that time Rand, look today the situation has gone worse! The Search Plus your world, and other such things through which Google simply collects data and use it, the consipracy has turned into reality, I would say bitter reality.
I'm willing to bet that Google isn't as smart as people think. They may hint that they can track you checking your rankings often and penalize you... but that doesn't make this true and I doubt it is true. Sounds like a scare tactic used to intimidate SEO's to me...