Target advertising is a very effective way of making money by knowing who you are and what you do and what you like. In order to know a lot about you, you need to be tracked, or simply spied on (it's that fine printing that sometimes not even is there).
Luckily you can reduce the information collected by all kind of weird tracking companies. Of course, you're not escaping NSA or any of the other number of intelligence organization your data passes as it leaves your modem (especially your ISP technically knows all about you). But you'd be surprised if you knew how many obscure companies there is that have a profile over your internet activities (if you're previously unprotected and you check your cookies in your browser, you'll find countless of cookies belonging to companies actually tracking you, but that's another discussion). There are multiple ways of tracking an individual online, and "marking" an individual with cookies is one way. Example: for every site you visit that uses google analytics, your google cookie (which identifies you) will be recognized by google analytics and you'll be identified and logged by google as a visitor on that site with full details about what, how long, when and exactly where on that site you are surfing and a bunch of other details; you can even be watched in real time.
Some people don't like that, and especially not me since I've been in the intelligence field professionally during my military service off shore. I'm not bragging about it, I'm just saying that it's not in your interest to share your activities with every country that your data passes.. they log almost everything and can do pretty much everything. Your email has a copy on several places. Anyway, here are some things you can do to at least get rid of some nosy companies (some completely, some only partially):
DoNotTrack Plus
This addon is a good first step. It's not watertight, but gives you a glimpse on how the web tracks you. It blocks several tracking companies while you visit sites, without breaking any pages (happens extremely seldom if ever). Problem is that some few tracking companies slips trough (updated versions of google analytics for example - if that haven't been updated in the add-on yet).
Flashblock
This might not seem like a privacy add-on at first glance. This add-on blocks flash applications (and similar adobe products.. see link). Instead of the actual flash content, you get a clickable placeholder; if you click on that placeholder, the flash file is loaded. It's easy to whitelist sites (such as youtube) where you want to allow flash content automatically. If you have this add-on, you'll notice that some sites have hidden flash-placeholders that don't really do anything for the actual site content or site function. Flash can be used to track you (and other things), see the addon below.
BetterPrivacy
I suggest you click the link and read what I'd just repeat anyway. In short: flash can be used to store cookies that can't be removed by the browser; it's a sneaky way of tracking those who think they're safe by blocking regular cookies.
Adblock plus
This add-on not only blocks ads, but there's a filter you can install for it that blocks privacy-intruding content.
Facebook disconnect
Google disconnect
Twitter Disconnect
Those three disables cross-site request from any site to Facebook, Google and Twitter respectively. Even if you use, say adblock-plus with a privacy filter, images (like and share buttons) that are loaded from Twitter and Facebook via javascript and/or html also comes with a http-request to facebook saying: "hi, I want you to send me the like button as requested by example.com/how_to_quit_smoking". Even if no cookie is sent (which it could in a way if sophisticated javascript scrips are used to request that button), you can be recognized by both IP and your unique web browser signatures (they're all unique). Facebook has your personal profile+IP and every request like that can be associated with your profile, in theory (don't know if they actually do that).
Google/Yandex search link fix
When you click one of the search result links in a google search, it's destination changes right before that link is followed. If the link points to example.com, it will when you click it first change to a tracking url, something like this: www.google.com/track/search_was=your_search_id&clicked_link=this_link. That link logs your click and then sends you to the desired destination. That way, google knows which of the links in the search results you click. If you find that privacy intruding, this add-on prevents the links from switching like that.
Google privacy
This is similar to the add-on above, but not quite. It adds an additional optional link after google's search result link, leading to the actual page you want to visit instead of google's tracking url. You don't cancel the utility of the above add-on by installing this one. This one also works for facebook, youtube and some other sites: it adds an additional "privacy-respecting" link instead of the url-tracking one.
TrackMeNot
This one is quite gold. It queries google/bing and other optional sites for searches while imitating your browser (and sometimes even cookies). That makes it harder to make a profile of you as your real searches will be mixed with automated random ones (words fetches from various news sites). I suggest you click the link and read about it.
Https everywhere
This does indeed increase your security (and privacy) if you surf wirelessly. If you dislike the fact that the various countries that your data passes when routed trough the internet, logs your internet activity, this is a good choice for you. It encrypts your traffic to/from a whole bunch of sites by using technology already supported by your browser and the websites in question. What this add-on do is merely (sort of) changing the http:// to httpS:// in the URL-bar, meaning that you request a secure connection to the webserver. This is merely a layer of security/privacy and not waterproof.
RequestPolicy
This one cover some of the above add-ons. It disallows any cross-site requests (but I don't know about sophisticated javascript cross-site requests). As explained before, when a website wants you to contact another webserver (e.g. some adservice or photo server), that webserver 'B' knows that you're visiting the site 'A' who asked you to request content on server 'B'. Most of the times, 'B' don't care and don't log it explicitly unless it's a company with interest of building a profile of you.
Self destructing cookies
Just got this one, and I find it very interesting. I can't give any comments on it since I only have had it for a minute or so (and work are calling), but check it out.
Sometimes some new interesting add-on appears here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/privacy-security/
Cheers,
Outspaced Dragon
No comments:
Post a Comment