I'm Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web

Discussion in 'privacy general' started by ronjor, Feb 29, 2012.

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  1. ronjor

    ronjor Global Moderator

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    http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...-companies-are-tracking-me-on-the-web/253758/


    Note: Long article
     
  2. Tarnak

    Tarnak Registered Member

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    "Oh, I'm being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow"...;)
     
  3. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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    Creepy indeed. Worth reading though!
     
  4. Trooper

    Trooper Registered Member

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    Thanks for posting this Ron. Great read!
     
  5. ronjor

    ronjor Global Moderator

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    Very talented writer is Alexis Madrigal.
     
  6. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    So has anyone tried Collusion?

    The author has made a not-so subtle point here: "All that I had "opted out" of was receiving targeted ads, not data collection. There is no way, through the companies' own self-regulatory apparatus, to stop being tracked online. None. "

    I wonder if "banning" tracking online would not violate the tracker's fundamental rights. It's like telling someone to close their eyes while I walk past.
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2012
  7. Palancar

    Palancar Registered Member

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    Even more reason to use VPN's and move around among their servers. You can leave the tunnel when doing personal banking, personal emails - both https in my case. You don't have to of course. That is just my policy or way I prefer.

    For forum interactions, surfing, google lookups, etc... its always a VPN tunnel for me.

    I value privacy and its so easy to use tunnels.
     
  8. LockBox

    LockBox Registered Member

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    Thanks for the post and link, Ron. It's good to see these issues brought to the front in longer form from solid journalists and in magazines with reputations like The Atlantic. Thanks again.
     
  9. tlu

    tlu Guest

    Yes, he is, and the article is certainly good. However, everybody on this forum should know through many threads here that countermeasures are relatively easy to implement:

    1. Forbid 3rd party cookies.
    2. Make session cookies your default.
    3. Forbid flash cookies.
    4. Use Adblock Plus (particularly with the EasyPrivacy and/or Fanboy's Tracker List subscriptions) and Noscript or, on Chrome, ScriptNo.

    Seriously, trackers don't worry me at all.
     
  10. Technical

    Technical Registered Member

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    How to do 1, 2 and 3 easily at Firefox?
     
  11. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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  12. tlu

    tlu Guest

    For 1 and 2 see here: choose "Use custom settings for history" , deselect "Accept third-party cookies" and select "keep until I close Firefox".

    For 3 use the addon BetterPrivacy (see also here) or choose the appropriate settings in the flash privacy settings panel.
     
  13. Technical

    Technical Registered Member

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