Posted on 08/16/2009 11:13:19 AM PDT by tunedin
WASHINGTON – The Barack Obama administration has announced plans to lift a government ban on tracking visitors to government websites, and potentially, collect their personal data through the use of "cookies" – an effort some suspect may already be in place on White House sites.
A ban on such tracking by the federal government on Internet users has been in place since 2000, however, the White House Office of Management and Budget now wants to lift the ban citing a "compelling need."
In fact, according to the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, federal agencies have already negotiated agreements and contracts with social networking sites like Google, YouTube, SlideShare, Facebook, AddThis, Blist, Flickr and VIMEO to collect information on visitors for federal web sites. All of these private companies are known to have agreements with federal agencies, but the public has never seen them.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
WAY too slow for video and gaming, unless maybe you purchase their premium service, which this old tightwad would NEVER, EVER, EVER consider, lol!
Yeah...., it’s like everything else in this world... it costs to do what you want to “really” do..., so people just put up with some things.... same on the Internet, too...
Yeep, that’s why I’m still recommending ‘Better Privacy’ & CCleaner... You can do what you want to do... For free! :-)
What do you use to block outgoing Internet connections from your computer?
ZoneAlarm Security Suite ($$..Yikes!) and CurrPorts (just to keep an eye on things realtime). True, the ZA Suite costs me, but what the heck ‘ya gonna do?... Any decent firewall solution is gonna cost ‘ya something. :-(
No, I’m not disagreeing with that (the cost of it). If you have a computer, there are going to be costs associated with it... :-)
I was just wondering, that’s all.
I’ve got a good firewall program that works on top of the Mac OS X firewall that is built in. And then I have that program “Little Snitch” (for Macintosh, of course...).
So, yeah..., there are some costs to it all.
“Don’t forget Flash cookies. A sneaky new type of cookie. If you run Firefox, get and install the addon ‘Better Privacy.’ When I did that last week, I found hundreds of cookies I had been totally unaware of.”
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/
- - -
LibWhacker, Thanks again.
Just found the place where they are stashed and removed 1,680 of them.
I’m not sure that’ll be enough to protect you.
Perhaps some more tech savvy FReepers can weigh in on this.
So what program would I as a consumer use to rid my computer of google analytics or scripts codes that are sending site owners private usage information? I have spyware and I do delete cookies when I go to gov sites & periodically delete all cookies.
Thanks. Great info.
You were asking someone else — So what program would I as a consumer use to rid my computer of google analytics or scripts codes that are sending site owners private usage information? I have spyware and I do delete cookies when I go to gov sites & periodically delete all cookies.
—
Well, you could start with not running javascript or java on your computer (browser). But, if you didn’t want to do that, you could watch your connections being made on websites and block the ones to Google Analytics (like the one here on Free Republic, for example). You can modify your hosts file on your computer and “deep-six” any connection to Google Analytics. And deep-six any other connection that you see that you don’t like, too. You can get lists for putting them into your hosts file and getting rid of all accesses to ad sites, too (along with the accompanying “tracking” that goes along with them).
I use a little program that makes it easier for me to modify my hosts file and I can add in new domain names for anyone I want to block from being accessed.
So, the bottom line, use your hosts file and deep-six all the thousands of sites that track and display ads, block all cookies, get rid of java and javascript, get rid of flash, block all graphics and put the security on your browser to the highest possible, get something like “Anonymizer.com” and use an anonymous proxy server... and that should do it... :-)
But, by then, you won’t even recognize anything as a “webpage” anymore, on your web browser.... LOL...
Thanks for all the tips...bump.
bushwon,
Star Traveler gave you a good answer. There is a lot of truth to what he says. Block almost everything and you may miss out what you are trying to find on the page.
Nevertheless, I’d suggest Firefox and the numerous security add ons for it. Some people use multiple browsers at the same time for different purposes. One browser for https connections and accounts, one for strictly browsing without cookies, etc.
http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
then
privacy and security addons
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:12
And don’t forget what libwhacker discussed, a new non-cookie cookie, flash cookies.
See
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2317375/posts?page=21#21
If you have real reasons to be concerned about security and privacy to the extent of revealing where you originate from online, instead of using the free and slow anonymity type services, consider buying acccess to a VPN (virtual private network) service.
bushwon,
Star Traveler gave you a good answer. There is a lot of truth to what he says. Block almost everything and you may miss out what you are trying to find on the page.
Nevertheless, I’d suggest Firefox and the numerous security add ons for it. Some people use multiple browsers at the same time for different purposes. One browser for https connections and accounts, one for strictly browsing without cookies, etc.
http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
then
privacy and security addons
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:12
And don’t forget what libwhacker discussed, a new non-cookie cookie, flash cookies.
See
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2317375/posts?page=21#21
If you have real reasons to be concerned about security and privacy to the extent of revealing where you originate from online, instead of using the free and slow anonymity type services, consider buying acccess to a VPN (virtual private network) service.
Tho I am not sure I understand all the scripts-related information, I am going to add on the Firefox privacy options & ck the .SOL files on my system. Thx.
Wow! I didn't see a total when I deleted mine, but there were definitely hundreds of them. And here I thought I was safe because I had Firefox configured to delete all cookies everytime I shut it down. Turns out I was worried about a tiny little mosquito while a monster crocodile was devouring me whole, lol!
Now that's an excellent idea! I'm running into more and more sites that unexpectedly require Flash in order to get anything done... like renewing my DMV auto registrations online a couple of months ago. Instead of diving into my Firefox options and fiddling with Flash settings (and then afterwards undoing it all), I could've simply shutdown Firefox and fired up Explorer. Thanks!
My bad... #57’s for you, thanks!
Thanks again.
So that was 1,680 .SOL files?!!!!!
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