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How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

nytimes.com

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Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#21

Post by kps »

inapis wrote: post #9
orangepanda wrote: post #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 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!

If you control your email, you can do slightly better with the ‘+’. Share addresses of the form ‘me+my-tag@’, strip on ‘-’ to deliver these to ‘me+my@’, and have ‘me@’ immediately block the sender.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#22

Post by pteraspidomorph »

saagarjha wrote: post #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 you…

I would suggest Privacy Badger nowadays (as a complement to the irreplaceable uBlock origin).

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#23

Post by saagarjha »

snlnspc wrote: post #19
soulofmischief wrote: post #16

Is this the level of technical competency needed to work at the New York Times? How much do they pay?

if you look up some info on this writer, I think you'll find competency was not considered

Hey now, there's no need to attack the author like this.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#24

Post by nishmastime »

orangepanda wrote: post #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 y…

Well, another problem is that if you reuse email addresses, then a social engineering attacker has an easy starting place across all services.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#25

Post by adambyrtek »

muterad_murilax wrote: post #14
orangepanda wrote: post #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 y…

"." works the same way.

Not the same way. The dot would be filtered out, but the part after the dot won't get removed, so john.smith@gmail.com is equivalent to johnsmith@gmail.com.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#26

Post by hbcondo714 »

> Avoid unnecessary web tracking

Google is just one of 100+ ad networks that show you personalized ads. You can turn off ads personalization from Google or any of the other participating ad networks here at http://optout.aboutads.info/

Source: https://adssettings.google.com

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#28

Post by snlnspc »

saagarjha wrote: post #23
snlnspc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you look up some info on this writer, I think you'll find competency was not considered

Hey now, there's no need to attack the author like this.

this is not a technical position managing security. most tech writers at major news institutions are likely not tested with technical interviews - they are writers with domain knowledge, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#29

Post by alpaca128 »

cloudyo wrote: post #11

-Use a private cloud, so that your data is in your control. We've actually developed a self-hosted private cloud solution as a substitute to Dropbox for exactly these reasons. Basically a private Dropbox at home (no complicated installation and no server needed) We're currently in beta, could interest a few in this thread! https://www.duple.io/en/ The point is to have a product that works just like a Dropbox, as simp…

Somehow I don't understand how you say Syncthing's disadvantage in comparison is that it's a P2P system[1], but at the same time your website says duple doesn't need a server.

Maybe I've misunderstood, but this sounds just like Syncthing with an always-on client - except for the file versioning, that sounds like an interesting feature to me.

[1] https://blog.duple.io/what-is-the-point-of-duple/

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#30

Post by joosters »

hbcondo714 wrote: post #26

> Avoid unnecessary web tracking Google is just one of 100+ ad networks that show you personalized ads. You can turn off ads personalization from Google or any of the other participating ad networks here at http://optout.aboutads.info/ Source: https://adssettings.google.com

Just because they no longer show you personalised ads doesn't mean they have stopped tracking you...
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