Posted on 05/02/2020 6:24:34 AM PDT by rlmorel
In the last three days, I have begun having issues using Google (I have to use Google for work, and I haven't seen the issue there) getting constant CAPTCHA, and this morning, out of the blue, my banking program refused to work saying that I had cookies blocked.
Now, I haven't made any changes to my browser settings (I use Safari) so I made sure VPN was off, cleared all caches, history, and cookies, but was still unable to login.
So I decided to change some settings I haven't touched in years, and one of them was the setting for "Web Site Tracking", and I unchecked the "Disable Web Site Tracking", and everything worked.
This is new.
Mine is screwed up too.
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....
I don’t think so. I have always for years had that option to disable cross-site traffic enabled, and never had a problem.
After I posted this vanity, I launched Chrome, set it up to allow cookies, but enabled cross-site traffic blocking (third party cookies) and it doesn’t work in Chrome either.
I disabled cross-site traffic blocking (allowing third parties to see where I have been browsing) and it works fine.
I am pretty sure it is that setting.
I think something is afoot.
I think more likely there WAS a change of some kind, but it wasn’t to enhance security, it was to enable some entity (Apple/Microsoft/Google/Verizon/State Government/Federal Government) to see my traffic patterns.
There has been talk of this by Apple, Microsoft, and Google to combat this ‘pandemic’ to help figure out where infected people might have gone.
For example, if you did a web search for a store’s hours of operation, that would indicate you may have gone there.
Yes, I am pretty suspicious. This is what they do in Communist China.
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.
After login USAA sends a one time security code that you must enter for access.
Yes, this is a different beast. I have been using dual factor authentication with my bank for quite a while with no problems.
This isn’t that...but yes, could be more hoops.
I have news for you, what you describe can be done without those changes, as for security patches, you would not know what effect they’ve had, holes in the browser’s security are found all the time, they get patched and no one really knows about it....
As far as being tracked, if you have a cell phone and it’s turned on, you can be tracked 24/7
Never had a problem with CAPTCHA until a few days ago. I did have occasional problems with Google (perhaps when I was doing a lot of searches) but only occasional. Now it is 100% of the time.
I wonder if the ISP is in cahoots with the state/federal government, but your ISP isn’t...yet.
I’ve noticed that there have been increased requests for allowing Cookies.
Switch to Brave Browser, better control of cookies. And it’s Free.
This is different behavior.
I work in IT, so I am painfully familiar with these things.
This isn’t about being tracked, per se. This is my concern about industry overtly working with government on these things, and doing it in the dark.
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...
Sure. There are alway things to switch to. I can use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, except as anyone who uses them knows, DuckDuckGo isn’t great, and so on.
Thing is, yeah...we can use this search engine or that, this browser or that, or this OS or that, but that is just allowing yourself, IMO, to be painted into a corner and marginalized.
My concern is not immediately with MY information being taken without my consent or knowledge, as a few other posters here have noted, you can make choices.
You can use a different browser.
You can use a different search engine.
You can use a different ISP.
You can stop using a VPN. (I am getting a distinct impression lately that VPNs are undesirable to some parties, and not just people who can’t get marketing information)
You can enable what needs enabling to make it work if you want.
It is the coordination in a time of crisis to make far reaching changes that worries me greatly. We see it already in these abhorrent Coronavirus bills. Who is to say it stops there?
So, yeah. I am concerned.
right now the NSA and other Federal Agencies have access to all your phone calls, emails and monitor all internet traffic anywhere.....
ATT, Verizon, and the other Tier 1 providers long ago allowed the Government to tap into the major Internet nodes and track everything....
If you Google Admiral Mike Rogers, who was head of the NSA, he discovered the illegal access of the tracking databases by 3 contractors to the FBI, who were not authorized to do so....
I have no real proof, but IMO the 3 contractors were doing political spying for the Obama Administration on any political enemy they had...Donald Trump was just one that got discovered.....
In my post above, those are all choices you can make.
This has the feel of a choice being forced on me by making something inconvenient enough that you surrender *something* to keep it...convenient.
This is done all the time. That way, YOU make the choice, you don’t have it forced on you (that is the thought process for the people who want the choice made) even though it IS forced on you.
That is what this smells like.
I have started threads here and posted (often too lengthy posts) on that exact subject, Admiral Rogers and his role as a quiet hero in all this, so I am aware of all that.
For those who may be unfamiliar with this aspect-I posted this a while back:
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The book “Crime in Progress” which is set to be released next month supposedly will state that Simpson was first hired to investigate Donald Trump “in the fall of 2015.
Fall of 2015? Hmm. What ELSE happened in late 2015? Hmm...let me think...oh yeah, that’s right:
Nellie Ohr began working with Fusion GPS (according to testimony by her husband) in late 2015. Could be a coincidence. Could be.
Here is an EXCELLENT article by Sundance (no surprise there!) which I recommend everyone read that pulls all this gobbledygook together into an understandable explanation that should make every American who is concerned with Civil Liberty sit up and take notice, and should make every scumbag out there involved with this very concerned that a spotlight may soon be coming their way: Evidence of Obama Administration Political Surveillance Beginning Mid-2012...
As Dan Bongino and others have been pointing out, it is looking far more likely that this spying on the Trump Campaign is only the tip of the iceberg in what appears to be the REAL scandal which the Left is pulling out all the stops to find a way to suppress its exposure...the REAL scandal is likely to turn out to be longstanding, ongoing illegal spying on political opponents using the tools of government by the Obama Administration and the Democrat Party, going on at least as far back as 2012.
Questions, questions.
Was Fusion GPS a “contractor” with access to the NSA database? Admiral Rogers initiated auditing processes showing that there were massive abuses in the time frame between November 2015 to April 2016 where 85% of the data extractions were unlawful (meaning the contractors exceeded their allowed search and searched for...other things which were extracted and were then free to be shared with anyone anywhere without auditing).
Nellie Ohr, who began working for Fusion GPS in late 2015 (around the time of the huge uptick in illegal NSA database queries) also worked for...wait for it...Open Source Works, which is part the CIA, and has been there for years. She is a Russian Language Expert, just the kind of person who would be given access and specific assignments to translate or interpret SPECIFIC pieces of data as part of her job there. Was Nellie Ohr one of those “contractors who would be given access to do that kind of work who was...ahem...exceeding> her authority while in there doing her job to look at...ahem...other things?
In the FISA Court abuse report from Judge Rosemary Collyer (using the abuse data provided by the audit carried out by Admiral Rogers at NSA), it states that “...many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” So according to the explanation in the linked article above...in those illegal searches, the culprits were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates. Specific people, the same people, were being tracked/monitored in the majority of the increase in illegal accesses (my words), that is, it doesn’t appear to be across the the board. Who are those people being surveilled?
As stated in the article linked above, the contractor access was finally halted by Admiral Rogers on April 18th, 2016. The wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016. (Remember, this woman is not just his ‘spouse’. She is the one who complained and bragged on Facebook (which was since deleted...and this was all before it became widely known that the dossier was discredited) that HER husband (Glenn Simpson) was the REAL author of the Dossier, not Christopher Steele, and that her husband should get all the credit for it) What was that visit about?
The NSA Database uses Amazon Web Services, which is highly auditable, overseen by the NSA, and audited by both the NSA and special employees at Amazon Web Services (I know...I feel queasy about seeing AWS involved in some way with this) Apparently, what was being done is that blocks of data were being moved from the NSA databases where it was open to monitoring over to the CIA database where the monitoring was far more restricted and auditing was far narrower and under the direct control of Brennan. Only certain people were authorized to move this data. Who are those people, and what data was being moved...for what purpose?
Nellie Ohr essentially worked for John Brennan while she was at Open Source Works. (If interested, there is a bit of info about Open Source at this link: Charter of Open Source Org is Classified, CIA Says Things that make you go “Hmmmm.” Would not this nexus between Open Source Works, Fusion GPS, and the DOJ (Nellie Ohr) be a critical area to shine a spotlight on?
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I am aware of what you speak of. It is the nexus, what I see as an eager nexus between government and industry that is what bothers me in this specific case.
Comcast here...if anybody would be in cahoots, it’s them.
We noticed the same timing also. I do not think it is coincidence either. And it is not at the target server, it is something in between the user local access and the target domain server. This is what bothers me as a domain owner, why is there 3rd party intermediary information mining, control, or access being implemented without my permission or knowledge? Or without my host”s permission or knowledge?
Have you implemented “NoScript” yet and tried that? It will shut off everything individually by default and let you turn on only the one or two scripts actually needed to make the site fully function. And it is independent of any browser settings that might be monitored or blocked.
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