Can anyone here point me in the direction of a hosts file that lists all the spammy sites? If it's a DNS, the better.
Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
61–70 of 77 posts
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blo... From the article: A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—some may not realize that it feeds data to the ad industry. It's good to have alternatives, and I prefer Disconnect as Ghostery's motivations seem a little clouded.
Whenever someone talks about Ghostery, this is, of course, brought up. However, what isn't brought up that providing this data (GhostRank) is voluntary and I think it's disabled by default (but user is asked during the first time setup).
Whenever someone says that Ghostery own tracking is optional, one, of course, glances over a huge inherent conflict of interest behind Ghostery.
They make an anti-tracking product and they takes money from advertisers. That's their life blood, they need to track you, that's how they survive and it puts them in a very precarious situation. So trusting them to value your interests over their own is naive at best. If you are comfortable with the risk and the trade-off, good for you, but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#63My browser is always started in incognito mode, I open Firefox to do something in an authenticated way (posting something on HN, accessing my bank account, etc.) but normally, Firefox is always closed.
$ cat /usr/share/applications/chromium-browser-incognito.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Chromium Incognito Web Browser
GenericName=Incognito Web Browser
Comment=Access the Internet
Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito %U
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=chromium-browser
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
StartupWMClass=Chromium-browser
StartupNotify=true
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewWindow;Incognito;TempProfile
[NewWindow Shortcut Group]
Name=Open a New Window
Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito
TargetEnvironment=Unity
[Incognito Shortcut Group]
Name=Open a New Window in incognito mode
Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito
TargetEnvironment=Unity
[TempProfile Shortcut Group]
Name=Open a New Window with a temporary profile
Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --temp-profile
TargetEnvironment=Unity
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#64Can anyone here point me in the direction of a hosts file that lists all the spammy sites? If it's a DNS, the better.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#65You can achive a lot of this without using any browser extensions by simply using a hosts file such as the one at http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm (that one is Windows-oriented but it works fine in linux also). Or you could run your own dns but that's a bit more complicated to set up.
Have you noticed how this affects websites/apps breaking? meaning, certain websites won't play video unless an add plays first (hulu/comedy central sometimes) do those sites not work if you enable this?
Some sites don't work unless I turn off hosts. On MS-Windows I simply use this to toggle hosts file on and off in such cases - http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#66Has anyone seen a guide that discusses which browser settings and plugins complement one another? Or which ones to use in different scenarios, e.g., I know what I'm doing, I don't mind if things break on occasion, and I'm willing to spend a lot of time training my plugins (so NoScript and/or RequestPolicy would be recommended) vs. I'm setting up a computer for my parents who aren't tech savvy (so maybe Disconnect or Ghostery, plus....?).
This comes up a fair amount on Hacker News and in http://www.reddit.com/r/Privacy and I've seen plenty of posts and guides like https://prism-break.org/en/ and http://www.logicalincrements.com/firefox/ that just list a bunch of plugins. What I'm looking for is a set of use cases.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#67Can someone explain what this is? The front page tells me nothing and I can't watch the video right now.
I wish this trend of using videos instead of text would end soon.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many companies consider controlling essential to do business. But even if you disagree, you would do end user support a huge favor if you could mention that "It alters the webpages you visit and may break them." next to the download button.
Not a bad idea, but I'm thinking that most folks who are savvy enough to install Disconnect, Ghostery, NoScript, etc. are going to be aware that "stuff might break."
NoScript: yes. Disconnect and Ghostery: no.
An online article, friends or family send people to Disconnect and they click the install button. After that it protects them by "disconnecting" from "tracking sites". I promise you most people have no idea how it works. Don't believe me, try it: if you see a normal person using Disconnect let them explain to you what it does, how it works and also ask what the Disconnect visualizer says about who is sending data to whom.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Ghostery, but I believe it has been chided in the past for its 'GhostRank' feature (which, to their credit, isn't on by default). This is anonymous usage tracking of the trackers encountered which is sold to businesses to "help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties and comply with privacy standards." I would like to see more of a comparison of 'effectiveness' of both ex…
The other issue with Ghostery is that it doesn't block by default and you even need to go to advanced settings to tell it to block new trackers by default.
OK so after you turn off GhostRank and block all new trackers by default, how is it different?
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever someone talks about Ghostery, this is, of course, brought up. However, what isn't brought up that providing this data (GhostRank) is voluntary and I think it's disabled by default (but user is asked during the first time setup).
Whenever someone says that Ghostery own tracking is optional, one, of course, glances over a huge inherent conflict of interest behind Ghostery. They make an anti-tracking product and they takes money from advertisers. That's their life blood, they need to track you, that's how they survive and it puts them in a very precarious situation. So trusting them to value your interests over their own is naive at best. If yo…
but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious.