NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

Post by fixanoid » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

dictum wrote: post #80

byoogle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I work on Disconnect. I don't understand why any hacker would still put Ghostery on their machine: * Ghostery is run by former ad execs (7/9ths of their executive team): http://www.evidon.com/our-team * They make their money (I've heard tens of millions of dollars per year) selling user data to ad co's and data brokers: http://www.evidon.com/#block-views-from_our_partners-block

Why is the Disconnect trackers list ( https://services.disconnect.me/disconnect.json , referenced in https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect/blob/master/firef... ) an encrypted blob? That seems to go against the OS nature of the project.

Post by reginaldjcooper » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

mike-cardwell wrote: post #91

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…

Why do we still have referrers? They don't allow us to do anything that we wouldn't be able to do without them. If Mozilla and Google made a statement today saying, "We'll be removing referrers from cross site requests in 6 months time for Chrome and Firefox.", the tiny tiny proportion of sites that are using them for real functionality will have plenty of time to update. Of course, as a web developer, it's useful to…

Post by reginaldjcooper » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:02 PM 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 fixanoid » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:04 PM UTC

koide wrote: post #87

fixanoid wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, Ghostery is not paid to whitelist anyone, I would know since I run the database for Ghostery. As to your question: NoScript does a different thing -- it concentrates on limiting known security issues by disabling Javscript. Tracking is accomplished in a variety of ways, and only some of them are Javascript based. Ghostery looks for all of these and lets users know who is tracking them on any given web page.

Why would you know how or why Ghostery is paid just because you run their database? Unless you are something more than Ghostery's DBA.

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

richbradshaw wrote: post #115

ceejayoz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd pay for an intermediate level of GA in a heartbeat. Right now, once you hit 10M pageviews a month you either have to sample or pay $150k/year for Premium. I don't need support, an account manager, four-hour turnaround on data, an SLA, etc. I just need more pageviews sometimes.

Set up 2 GA accounts, then in your embed give even IP addresses version 1, and odd ones version 2, then you can track 20M pageviews. Admittedly it's a little rubbish. Guess you could use the API to combine them again for your own backend use.