[rlmorel]

Anyone else seeing this? Could this be my ISP knuckling under to something in my state where they are doing some tracking thing for Covid-19? This is new behavior, and as an IT person, changes of this nature make me suspicious.

[Agatsu77]

Mine is screwed up too.

[srmanuel]

You probably had an automatic update applied which changed the settings slightly, usually it’s not an issue and closes security holes in the browser but sometimes unintended side effects happen....

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Nothing unusual here.

I’m doing a lot of genealogical research and one German site responded “We see a lot of unusual activity from your IP address” after a lot of searches.
Another German genealogical site had an interesting replacement for Captcha. They showed a small graphic of civic records with the names, towns, and dates of birth of several people — in old German script! The security box showed the person’s name in light gray letters. You had to find the name in the graphics, find the DOB, and enter it precisely in the entry box. This has to be done for two people.

Very clever and a refreshing change from the damned Captchas.

By the way, I’m sure you know reCaptcha 11 years ago.

[G Larry]

Many sites have increased security which means more hoops for users.

After login USAA sends a one time security code that you must enter for access.

[mabarker1]

I’ve noticed that there have been increased requests for allowing Cookies.

Switch to Brave Browser, better control of cookies. And it’s Free.

[Openurmind]

Yes... Same here. There is some kind of blanket information control and tracking happening. And even worse it is even affecting my websites and host server. Our members cannot post anything with a pharmaceutical drug name in it at all. If they try this three times, a server throws an error that the IP address they are accessing the server from has been flagged as a spam address and puts up a captcha to prove you are not a bot. Even though it is the same IP address they have been using all day prior. Only with the drug names... Tested and reproduced as consistent. My host says it is something in between the member location and their server.

You are on the right track... Something is definitely happening with this...

[moovova]

I surf mostly with my phone and use the UC Turbo browser. I HAVE bumped into the captcha requirement more over the last few days than normal.

[rockrr]

I’ve seen it too. I found myself unable to log into a site that was previously no issue. I tried it using a machine that had an older version of Pale Moon and got right in.

[plain talk]

Google works fine here and I was able to get to my investment site OK.

[mowowie]

I sort of briefly looked over some article today about google doing away with 3rd party cookies or something like that.
They probably screwed up.

[Weirdad]

Sorry if this is a duplicate thought already expressed by others, I did not see it ... hope it is somewhat helpful. Certainly concerning the things you have noticed.

Do you not think it might be related to changes in “DNS over HTTPS”?

The issue is being forced this year by browser changes right at a time when suddenly many entities want to analyse online behaviors.

Here is a search about it, and other opinions. It is still in transition, has a lot of controversies, it is like using a VPN provider in that it transfers knowledge of details from one party to another that you hope you can trust, but it’s a new place for one stop shopping to spy on you. INstead of your ISP easily tracking you, a new encrypted DNS provider gets to spy.

Search:

https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=dns%20over%20https

Example article about how it is not necessarily as great a thing for privacy and security as they claim:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/dns-over-https-causes-more-problems-than-it-solves-experts-say/

Firefox turned encrypted DNS on by default in February 2020, I turned it off until I figure the implications more:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/firefox-turns-encrypted-dns-on-by-default-to-thwart-snooping-isps/

Microsoft building it into Windows 10:

https://mspoweruser.com/dns-over-https-windows-10/

How to turn it on explicitly in all browsers (decent starting point):

https://www.zdnet.com/article/dns-over-https-will-eventually-roll-out-in-all-major-browsers-despite-isp-opposition/

If you wish to use OpenDNS for DOH (encrypted DNS), I have used them for a long time (on my router, this new system on most browsers will bypass your router DNS from your “new” browser with default encrypted DNS!) though I an not sure I trust them any more than any giant company:

https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038086532-Using-DNS-over-HTTPS-DoH-with-OpenDNS

[discostu]

It’s the arms race. Sites want that kind of tracing for many reasons (mostly revenue). Nobody really liked being traced that way. So the guys coding sites find new ways to detect you’ve got stuff turned off and refuse to work until you turn it on. Then the browser add-on community finds new ways to hide that it’s turned off. Lather rinse repeat.

[goldbux]

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