How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
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Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#2[flagged]
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#3Step 1 - do not create a free account or logging to read The Times
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#4> A few more suggestions:
> “Create a different email address for every service you use,” wrote Matt McHenry. “Then you can tell which one has shared your info, and create filters to silence them if necessary.”
Obligatory mention - for gmail you can suffix your email address with a service name by using +, e.g., johndoe+adobe@gmail.com will be delivered to johndoe@gmail.com. So if a service leaks your data or sells your email, you’ll know who to blame.
Although the article recommends not to use gmail, it’s a neat trick if you’re stuck with it.
"Forget password" becomes unusable though, since you’ll probably forget what suffix you used for each service.
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#5> If you’re in that category, Ms. Winterton recommended Ghostery, a free plug-in for most web browsers that “blocks the trackers and lists them by category,” she wrote.
I’m not sure I can recommend Ghostery, as their business model is a bit suspicious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Criticism
> Using websites whose addresses begin with https are also safe; they, too, encrypt their data before it’s sent to your browser (and vice versa).
Safe from your public Wi-Fi operator. Not from the company with a tracking script on the page.
> You don’t sign into Apple Maps or Safari (Apple’s web browser)
You sign into the OS, though.
> You never want to tell Facebook where you were born and your date of birth. That’s 98 percent of someone stealing your identity!
I can literally Google this information. We need to stop treating knowledge of public data like this as some sort of identity metric.
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#6[flagged]
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#7> A few more suggestions: > “Create a different email address for every service you use,” wrote Matt McHenry. “Then you can tell which one has shared your info, and create filters to silence them if necessary.” Obligatory mention - for gmail you can suffix your email address with a service name by using +, e.g., johndoe+adobe@gmail.com will be delivered to johndoe@gmail.com. So if a service leaks your data or sells y…
Outlook.com supports this as well, and so does Fastmail.
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#8> Apple’s privacy website reveals many examples: You don’t sign into Apple Maps or Safari (Apple’s web browser), so your searches and trips aren’t linked to you.
Not linked... in a way visible to you.
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#9> A few more suggestions: > “Create a different email address for every service you use,” wrote Matt McHenry. “Then you can tell which one has shared your info, and create filters to silence them if necessary.” Obligatory mention - for gmail you can suffix your email address with a service name by using +, e.g., johndoe+adobe@gmail.com will be delivered to johndoe@gmail.com. So if a service leaks your data or sells y…
Oh companies have become smarter about it! Even the scammers I suspect! Many won’t accept + in the email address and I think now it’s well known enough that most scammers will run a regex to detect and remove the + sign.
Useful workaround is to have unique aliases on a domain name you control. Can’t get around that with a minute of work!
Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet
#10I think there are different categories of "tracks". One category is marketing tracks, which include cookies, browser profiling, tracking scripts, etc. This is the one most discussion on HN is aimed at and most people find personally offensive but aren't materially harmed by. The second is legal tracks, which is exposure to harm from legal authorities for activities such as piracy, political activism, and various types of forbidden speech under different legal/national regimes. The third type is personal tracks, which I categorize as the ability for private individuals or groups to connect your online presence to your real self. That is the one I'm most concerned with, as internet users seem almost entirely unconcerned about it but it has far more potential to harm you than Google knowing your sexual fetishes. Nobody cares that they're exposing their real name and face to millions of people and it only takes one lunatic who decides your activities or opinions are worth trying to ruin your life to cause you a world of hurt.