The Collusion add-on for Firefox & Ubuntu

I've been playing with this add-on for a few days.

Mostly I browse using a combination of Privoxy and SimpleBlock. However, the attachment shows what I saw when I turned off both Privoxy and SimpleBlock for a while. On my machine at least, the display of the circles isn't satisfactory. Most of the screen isn't utilized and some stuff even is partly off-screen.

To get a better idea of what's going on, there's the "export graphics" option that gives the information in a long line of text that's not immediately "human-readable" but it can be massaged with the use of grep and perl pie. Since my competence is quite minimal, it takes me quite a few steps (that can be chained into one) but I can reduce the "export graphics" output from this:

Code:

{"jid1-f9uj2thwoam5gq-at-jetpack":{"referrers":{},"visited":true},"google.com":{"referrers":{"mozilla.org":[920463,"text/javascript","application/x-javascript","image/jpeg",null],"webupd8.org":[2408974,"text/css","text/javascript;charset=utf-8",null,"text/css;charset=UTF-8","text/html;charset=utf-8"],"blogspot.in":[1335273,"image/png","text/css",null,"text/javascript;charset=utf-8","application/x-javascript;charset=UTF-8"],"youtube.com":[4011280,"text/html","text/html;charset=UTF-8","text/javascript;charset=utf-8","text/javascript;charset=UTF-8"],"blogger.com":[4701171,"image/png","image/jpeg"],"datamation.com":[1834357,"image/png"],"computerworld.com":[870157,"text/javascript;charset=UTF-8"],"omgubuntu.co.uk":[876128,"text/javascript;charset=utf-8","text/javascript;charset=UTF-8","text/html;charset=utf-8"]},"visited":true},"mozillazine.org":{"referrers":{},"visited":true},"mozilla.org":{"referrers":{},"visited":true},"wilderssecurity.com":{"referrers":{},"visited":true}, ...

to this:

Code:

google.com contacted by mozilla.org, webupd8.org, blogspot.in, youtube.com, blogger.com, datamation.com, computerworld.com, omgubuntu.co.uk

quantserve.com contacted by ted.com, conceivablytech.com, linuxbsdos.com, guardian.co.uk, askubuntu.com, slashgear.com, ostatic.com, stackexchange.com, computerworld.com, simplyhired.com

zdbb.net contacted by extremetech.com

2o7.net contacted by extremetech.com, computerworld.com

statcounter.com contacted by webupd8.org, ostatic.com, wordpress.com

distrowatch.com contacted by tradepub.com

blogger.com contacted by webupd8.org, blogspot.in

yahoo.com contacted by yahoo.net

yahoo.net contacted by yahoo.com

computerworld.com contacted by simplyhired.com
...

 

Whenever you go on internet- Google, Yahoo, Omniture and some others are tracking you from website to website, profiling your Likes, Dislikes and Interests. I laugh at the firewall nerds on firewall forums because they really don't know what's the real agenda is.

90% of the firewalls are trash and useless in that they are unable to properly flag you to make you aware of this "track and profile". You need an accessible, user-friendly, "real time" firewall log to see this- with the User ability to deny the connections in "real time".

Many of the "dark" sci-fi books are coming true with respect to populace control. We are a couple of steps away from being like China.

 

That's not really what Firewalls are for.

 

As Hungry Man said, the purpose of a firewall is not to stop user tracking. However there are tools that enable you to see in real time what happens regarding your connections (Collusion is one of them), and there are also tools that allow you to deny such connections (AdBlock Plus comes to mind).

 

Will any Linux user please comment on "On my machine at least, the display of the circles isn't satisfactory. Most of the screen isn't utilized and some stuff even is partly off-screen." from my first post?

 

vasa, not sure what you mean by that?
The display is wrong? Not fullscreen?
Mrk

 

Mrk, please look at the picture I posted in the first post of this thread. Some of the circles overlap the text area on the left. One (marked by a red ellipse) has even run off the left end. One seems to run off at the bottom and one seems to run off on the right.

I think that this problem is manifesting itself because, by default, the circles are supposed to repel each other to give a nice spread. And this is successful on a Win 7 PC. It's on my Ubuntu that I'm seeing the overflow.

If it is a general issue for Linux users, I'd inform the dev. As you can see, I'm not sure whether any Firefox on Linux user has been there, done that.

Anyway, it's not a big deal. I'm planning to use this extension in "text mode".

 

You can see different shading of connecting lines changes under the text panel on the left so it seems to be by design. That text is floating above the graph.
I'll see if I can test this.
Mrk

 

1. PeerBlock is only as good as the white/black lists.

2. Google, Yahoo, Omniture and some others link your "profile" to a Location using ICMP.

In the last 12 months, many websites have made "open" ICMP mandatory if you wish to use their website- As an example: Home Depot, Newegg, Hulu, Wilders Secuity limit your access if you block all ICMP.

It didn't use to be that way.

 

This post is off-topic.

 

Mrk, I don't know what happened by now things are as they should be. No overlap and things are properly centered. This is after an update to the latest Fx 11 beta.

 

Weird ... I'll still examine it. I installed the extension and checking, but it's taking some time to populate the graph. And I want the data to have more than a few points.
Mrk

 

Spoke too soon. Snafu See the stuff marked with red. But it was fine sometime ago. I then wiped the old graphic (which was proper) by choosing the reset option and the new graphic is showing the old problem. Maybe some sort of "race condition"?

 

I don't know if that's the correct term, but at least on my kit, it does appear that doing thing fast causes the Snafu. I used to quickly open several tabs that I know are rich with trackers. I'd go to Google News and then click on a lot of news items from different sources. Doing so seems to result in a "smaller" canvas and the disorientation.

If I go slow ... just click on one link, read a bit, click on another link, read a bit, and so on, the circles are nicely spread out and the canvas appears full-size.

I suspect my old Dell 1545 (n series) Inspiron laptop with its Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB RAM maybe inadequate. Anyway, I'll look into the matter some more and may contact the dev again with my "finding".