Regarding Facebook (and perhaps a few others), their rating seems misleading. Although they may only have 4 trackers on their own site, they have trackers spread all over the web at other sites. I'm seeing more and more "log in with Facebook" on various sites. I didn't realize the dictionary sites were so popular. I tend to just look up a new word on a general search engine. Often I don't have to visit another site after that, as the definition is usually there in the summaries of the search results.
Also interesting is the "Web Privacy Census" from the Univ of California Berkeley Center for Law and Technology -http://www.law.berkeley.edu/privacycensus.htm- They've been tracking trackers since 2009, and say that they'll release quarterly updates.
Yes, plus flash cookies, HTML5 storage, etc. The summary at -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_cookie- is pretty good.
Jeezus that is sick. I assume that using Sandboxie and Shadow Defender can defeat these cookies. This should be illegal.
A friend who I met here got me started on Ra's Fnord. It was so easy I couldn't believe it. But I have a lot to learn about VM's. You mentioned using different VMs for different identities. I think that is the way to go. And you also mentioned using more than one VPN. So do you run a VPN for your system and then run another one from within a VM?
I've done that. My main system now runs several pfSense VMs. Each runs a different VPN/route client. Some "outer" VPNs only connect directly. Other "inner" VPNs, which I pay for "anonymously", only connect via outer VPNs. Generally, each "workstation" VM always uses the same inner VPN/route. Sometimes I also run VPNs in workstation VMs, giving me three levels of VPN nesting.