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.
Thanks to Freeper markomalley for posting this thread. I also agree with his extensions caveats found in Reply #1. Take them to heart.
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Yes, private. Of course. But, just hypothetically, how will people be able to click on my private diary, which I emphasize is private, and is most assuredly not clickbait, so that they can see WHAT HAPPENS NEXT in my private diary?
/s
I worry about private companies far less than I worry about government spooks.
We live in 1984, in terms of privacy.
Thanks
My laptop has window and Linux installed in a dual boot configuration.
Sometimes I use Windows for work, but when it comes to personal surfing, banking or Business I use Linux.
Truthfully Linux is no harder to use than Windows.
Bttt.
Bump 4 l8r
For example, I named my diary !!!BOMBSHELL!!!
Then I posted to Facebook telling people that they
wouldn't believe what I was going to put in my diary.
TOR browser is liek a big red flag for gubmint officials- They CAN track you when using TOR- (There’s a yuotube video proving it- ) So basically you are just attractign more sophisticated surveillance folks when you wave the TOR flag o nthje net
for receivign emails only- mailinator.com- totally temporary- and no sign up needed- when you need to give a site an addy- just type soemthign you will remember, like “Bobsyeruncle@mailinator.com” Then simply go to mailinator.com and type bobsyeruncle in the search bar- and htere’s the email- easy peasy
They delete after a certain number of hours- and you can manually delete too if you need to get rid of say something like login info for new site-
.....
The simple use of VPN + Tor + Tails + Proton Email , all free shy of maybe your choice of a VPN are good security “IF USED PROPERLY”.......
My 2 cents .....Stay Safe !!
#9 virtual machines
I’d like to be able to do this on Ubuntu, but could never figure out how to do it.
Any good tutorials?
I tried using the one in the Ubuntu help site, but no luck...
The law should be that ISPs can't keep logs.
As for VPNs, they are ISPs once removed.
If you send a nastygram or out an archive of some rat's email via a VPN, you can't be caught unless both the VPN and the ISP cooperate.
It starts with where you went. They'll have the IP address to which you uploaded.
The next step in any investigation will be to get the owner of that IP address to cough up. If they are an honest VPN, they will not have a record. If they are an honest ISP, they will not have a record.
If they are a compromised ISP, game over. You are unmasked!
If they are a compromised VPN, they will cough up which incoming IP originated the connection. Then the process moves to the ISP of the originating connection. Which of their subscribers had that IP address at that time?
Do you trust Comcast? Do you trust Verizon?
Oracle Virtualbox is extremely easy to use (IMHO).
You can install the version that's on the Software Manager (which is just point and click as you know) or you can get the latest version (5.1.x) by using a terminal (instructions here.
There are a couple of key things that I've found that help:
Hope that helps.
Give “Ghostery” a try .... its free. Blocks google and other search engine analytics. Duck Duck Go (DDG) does not track or sponsor trackers . Now that said the new threat is our ISP selling our data.
Wonder why my ISP selling my personal legal use of a “product” I pay for is any different than my doctor or insurance company violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or a Lawyer Client Confidentially privilege .....?
GOP-E ..... doom on em !
That's a really good point.
What you want to look for is a VPN provider who has a "no logs" policy.
Or if you really want to go full bore, you can create your own personal VPN provider through openvpn.net. (Part of this is creating a virtual machine in the cloud, loading the openvpn server software on that virtual machine, and then connecting to the Internet via that virtual machine)
(Of course, that assumes that the cloud provider -- AWS, Rackspace, or whoever doesn't track what the activity your virtual server has either)
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I occasionally use Private browsing with Safari on my mac. It lets me into paid sites after I have used up my free uses.
I also use DuckDuckGo as my browser.
How safe am i?
Bookmarking
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