NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

Post by sdoering » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:20 AM UTC

quesera wrote: post #24

Smerity wrote: post #7

There are two primary issues here: the prevalence of Google Analytics and the unencrypted nature of the majority of websites. Google Analytics is on a substantial proportion of the Internet. 65% of the top 10k sites, 63.9% of the top 100k, and 50.5% of the top million[1]. My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far…

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

Post by psbp » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:26 AM UTC

IBM wrote: post #42

suprgeek wrote: post #15

A perfect reason to NOT let Google own all layers of the stack between you and the internet (or indeed the real world). Search - Check (goog.com) Mail - Check (Gmail) Browser - Check (chrome) Devices - Check (Android/Chrome books) Websites - Check (Double click/AdMob, Unknown number of other companies) Google Analytics - Check Your DNA - Check (23&Me) Cars - Check (self-driving cars) I am probably missing large chunk…

Search was easy to replace. Bing and DuckDuckGo are both good. Firefox was an easy switch now that Chrome seems to be much more of a resource hog (and the extensions are better). I don't have an Android phone. For e-mail I've switched to Fastmail but Outlook is also a good alternative if you want something free. I don't use anything else. I'd say e-mail was the hardest friction point of them all, but overall it was p…

Post by r0h1n » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:34 AM UTC

quesera wrote: post #24

Smerity wrote: post #7

There are two primary issues here: the prevalence of Google Analytics and the unencrypted nature of the majority of websites. Google Analytics is on a substantial proportion of the Internet. 65% of the top 10k sites, 63.9% of the top 100k, and 50.5% of the top million[1]. My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far…

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

Post by byoogle » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:38 AM UTC

sdoering wrote: post #41

quesera wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

Greetings. I nearly have the same policy, regarding surfing and my addons. I would only advise against Ghostery, as they whitelist some trackers, if being paid. With every update I had to reselect these trackers. And Evidon (Ghostery's mothership) selling usageinformation really bugs me: http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/31/ghostery-a-web-tracking-bl... I would recommend the FF-addon Diconnect: https://addons.mozilla.or…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:45 AM UTC

r0h1n wrote: post #45

quesera wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

I would replace Ghostery in your list with Disconnect. I would also add the 'Self-destructing Cookies' browser plugin. In its settings, whitelist a very limited set of sites you want to allow persistent (or session) cookies.