Posted on 03/31/2017 7:39:38 PM PDT by markomalley
ISPs and providers can now sell your data and browser histories. The U.S. Congress sold you out. If you had any browsing dignity, you don’t now. Too bad you couldn’t pay the legislators as much as the data wolves.
You should have been doing these things all along, but now it’s time to decide just how much dignity you have. Most of you won’t bother. This isn’t for you. Click away, and go surf.
For those remaining, take these privacy tips seriously.
For some of you, this means a daily cleanout. What you DO NOT clean out (will cause you hassles) are cookies associated with financial institutions. They will put you through a drill when they don’t find the cookie that they like. Scrape them. Every browser has the ability to do this, with Chrome being the most difficult. But we’re not surprised because it’s from Google—the company whose very life depends on knowing information about you.
You can divide your cookies up this way. I use Firefox for business. Chrome for Facebook and, when I absolutely must, for gmail—as I volunteer for an organization that uses it extensively because they’re dirt poor. You still have to clean each browser. Add the EFF’s Privacy Badger to each. For fun, run Ghostery and Privacy Badger to catch it all.
Use Flash only when you must. When you use a Flash blocker, you can often run web pages without it. Examples include United Airlines and PayPal. The only time you should use Flash is if a page refuses to load without it. Flash can suck enormous amounts of historical data from your browser in a heartbeat.
When you type https://www.facebook.com, the first thing that happens is your browser asks a DNS server for Facebook’s current IP address. Every request you make of a browser is looked up in this way. And most cable broadband services and ISPs use DNS servers that log your every search. Surprise!
Everywhere you go, the time and your personally identifiable IP address become logged to serve up as tasty data for those that would abuse it. Change it. Every operating system does this differently. Look up how to do it. DO NOT USE GOOGLE’S DNS server. Use one that doesn’t log you. The DNS.Watch servers do not log requests. They’re not especially fast or slow, in my experience. Comcast, by contrast, will eat your DNS request information up to seven times before giving your browser the actual answer in my experience. There are DNS servers. Stop the DNS logging; one more garden hose you put your heel into.
Yep, Google, Bing and Yahoo track you. Instead use DuckDuckGo.com. They don’t track. You can proxy requests that aren’t tracked to each of these from DuckDuckGo. Stop feeding the demons.
The biggie search engines have a business model built upon serving you pimped/paid-for results, and noting exactly what you searched for so that you can be served up ads—and eventually your IP address and browsing habits can be correlated into dossiers on you and your search history. Often these can also be used to conflate “things” or characteristics about you, and you have no redress when they make mistakes. You built Google’s billions. It wasn’t because Google was benign.
The Onion Router/TOR uses a network within a network to obscure the origin of requests made of the network. It puts you on radar because it behaves differently, but it does provide a degree of anonymity. It’s not perfect, and I suspect it’s been cracked, but only by the governmental spooks who don’t sell your data. At least I hope they don’t.
Some sites will allow you to delete your personally identifiable information and search histories. Looking at you, Google. Go to these sites. Carefully follow the instructions regarding deleting your history. Then return later, and make sure it’s gone. Unfortunately, this is a rinse-repeat item, as sometimes histories magically return. Oh, gosh! That shouldn’t happen.
You may be captive to Charter, AT&T, Google, Comcast, etc. But if you live in an area with multiple providers, change. Why? You get a good deal for being a new subscriber (watch contract details). And the ISP you currently have is no longer able to vacuum all of the details you generate in using internet services. Their data has gaps and isn’t as valuable.
Yes, running a virtual machine for the sole purpose of disguising a browser works. It’s a different browser and is typified from an analytics perspective as possibly a different user. Clean each VM’s history just like you would above, and use the same techniques mentioned above as well. It makes life more difficult for the data grazers.
Browsers are typified into single individuals by weird things such as font mix, add-ins and extensions. The less a browser is messed with, the less unique it is. Uniqueness helps personal identification and correlation of analytical data captured at websites about the browser. Be generic.
Finally, use https log-ons only. There are so many reasons to do this. Freedom and dignity are important. Exercise them.
I tend to think that some extensions (like Adblock) are very useful in maintaining privacy.
One useful extension for Chrome (Chromium) and Firefox is "Trashmail." Trashmail allows you to generate temporary email addresses that you can use for various and sundry websites (such as if you wish to comment on a news article, but don't want to subject your real email address to a ton of spam). You can forward up to 10 responses for each free email address to a real address for a month -- free version -- or you can pay $13 a year and have the ability to create up to 2500 disposable addresses that don't automatically delete until you tell them to do so. (I use "free" -- but your needs may change)
Secondly, he advocates the use of TOR. I agree that TOR is a really good option, but TOR is slow and a lot of sites will not allow themselves to be accessed by TOR (such as Yelp).
Having said that, there are a LOT of options out there for VPN services. Both paid and free. One option to look at is VPNBook. This is a bare bones system with no user interface (you get a login and then configure your client yourself). Of course, it's slower, but you are not being tracked.
Most of these may prohibit *websites* from tracking you but your ISP still knows where you go unless you use a VPN.
I use a VPN on my desk top computer. I can browse from IP addresses all around the world.
Get an offshore VPN.
Thank you for this!
Bttt.
#6
Interesting suggestions all. But the most dangerous is not shown and may be the most likely. Extortion as in “pay me x dollars or I’ll share this with your entire list of friends, your employer, etc.
Later
Bookmark.
Exactly, a VPN services is the most important of all and he didn’t even mention it.
Also use Linux instead of Windows 10. Windows 10 is spyware.
Finally get a secure email account. Because they are data mining everything in your email account.
Internet tech ping
Bookmark
BMK
what would be considered a secure email account?
Unless Tor's performance has recently improved, I don't think it is a practical option.
I use Startmail. An account costs about $60/year.
They don’t data-mine your account. I.e. they make their money from providing the email account and not from selling your private information.
You can also have multiple email alias.
Finally they have encrypted email services where you can send and control an email you send to someone. (i.e. they can respond to your email but not forward it).
Of course they can always take a picture of the email!
* Send letters.
* In person discussions in private locations are private.
* World War 2 methods of conveying written info is just as good today.
* Your paper diary is private. Your blog and social media is not.
I’ve been using Apple computers for years. My oldest son switched to Linux several years ago. He’s going to let me borrow one of his laptops that he’s got Linux on, and help me get acclimated to it. I’ll be in the market for a new computer at some point, and he suggested I give one of his a try to see if I’d be happy with the Linux format.
Any opinions pro or con regarding Searchlock...?
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