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How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

nytimes.com

71–80 of 108 posts

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#71
post #51

Install uMatrix and block all 3rd party JavaScript. It breaks functionality in some sites that embed social networks' widgets, but other than that works like a charm. As a bonus sites load at least 30% faster.

I use uMatrix lazy style - if go to page and it works without changes I use it - if it breaks but I need to use it allow all - if it breaks but I don't care that much close the tab.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#73
post #21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you control your own email, why not just have company@ ?

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#74
post #51

Install uMatrix and block all 3rd party JavaScript. It breaks functionality in some sites that embed social networks' widgets, but other than that works like a charm. As a bonus sites load at least 30% faster.

You can do that in uBlock Origin too.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#75

> 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…

> We need to stop treating knowledge of public data like this as some sort of identity metric.

And one step further, such public data should not be used by corporations / governments to validate (or inform much, beyond "details") the identity of someone. It's just too unreliable and can't be verified.

Maybe PGP or similar, hashed from some source biometric data, to allow multiple 'IDs' over a lifetime but 100% verifiable.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#76

The omission of "Disable third party cookies" is fairly shocking. From my understanding, it might be the single most effective thing you can reduce tracking. Whenever I get the chance, I recommend the following pieces of Internet hygiene to anyone and everyone I can: * Disable 3rd party cookies * uBlock Origin * Privacy Badger * HTTPS Everywhere These things are all dead simple and will significantly reduce your trac…

Won’t disabling third-party cookies render certain payment gateways unusable? While such advice may be very welcome among savvy computer users who know when they should temporarily turn third-party cookies back on, the NYT is unlikely to give advice that will break online shopping for large numbers of people.

I've had 3p cookies disabled for years and never experienced an issue with payments. But, it may be that I don't pay for things as often as others. My recommendations will slightly break some things like embedded Twitter posts but it's rare that I experience a site being functionally impacted in ways I care about.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#79
CVS receipt coupons are based upon previous purchases + like 15% randomization in related categories (or maybe just random promotions they have going).

My CVS coupons are nearly always for an antacid, nicotine cessation, or allergy medicine - then I usually get a few extra coupons for something that surprises me like beauty products or facial cleanser.

There’s nothing Google involved with the CVS coupons, I’d bet money on that.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#80

> 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…

>since you’ll probably forget what suffix you used for each service

You can put that in a safe wallet. OneDrive provides that now

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