Yes! Disable 3rd party cookies, delete your Google & Facebook accounts, and done. Easy peasy.
..and compile your own Android OS without the google parts, or wait for eelo.io to land :)
Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
21–30 of 159 posts
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#22I hope duck duck go is not some google's back channel project just to have a leg in contradicting initiatives.
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use gmail and don't wish to give it up for now. I launch gmail in a site-specific browser process so that my login is isolated. This makes it so that in my main browser, I'm not logged into my Google account and they don't see where I go. As a bonus, the "filter bubble" effect is diminished for my Google searches. That's not a reasonable approach for non-techies, but I thought it might interest the HN audience.
I think you're overestimating the privacy benefits afforded by using two browsers. Both browsers are using the same IP address which means that google can identify you in the other browser with high certainty. I also have two browsers and use only one to log into google. Yet, google firmly places me in my filter bubble even in the other browser.
or look at the unique fingerprint of your browser anyways :)
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#24Yes! Disable 3rd party cookies, delete your Google & Facebook accounts, and done. Easy peasy.
I wish that was enough. The articles that show up here on HN from time to time make me think they can cross-reference data and fingerprint you through many data sources and more advanced tracking (things that we discover from time to time like canvas, css). People that have you on their contact list, your e-mails that hit their servers even when you don't have a Gmail, DNS, CDN, cloud services, your phone unless you go full tin foil hat, data they acquire from other companies. I try to protect my privacy but I think it's all futile, they have too much power.
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#25I hate reading news articles about tech stuff from "leading news sources", they never really know what's going on. It's like they use technology to scare people into either voting for someone or buying something from someone.
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use gmail and don't wish to give it up for now. I launch gmail in a site-specific browser process so that my login is isolated. This makes it so that in my main browser, I'm not logged into my Google account and they don't see where I go. As a bonus, the "filter bubble" effect is diminished for my Google searches. That's not a reasonable approach for non-techies, but I thought it might interest the HN audience.
Maybe I am missing something here, but how does this help against being tracked by google through google analytics and/or their ad-network? Sure they cannot 1:1 link your {analytics, ad} identity to your actual Google identity, but I am reasonably sure that they have all the data necessary to do it via (not too many) connecting dots.
yea.. you can use something like Privacy Badger and block analytics
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#27Yes! Disable 3rd party cookies, delete your Google & Facebook accounts, and done. Easy peasy.
I use gmail and don't wish to give it up for now. I launch gmail in a site-specific browser process so that my login is isolated. This makes it so that in my main browser, I'm not logged into my Google account and they don't see where I go. As a bonus, the "filter bubble" effect is diminished for my Google searches. That's not a reasonable approach for non-techies, but I thought it might interest the HN audience.
I register all my accounts using Gmail because I feel DNS/domain security is a joke (this was debated here in the past but I don't have the technical knowledge to explain it any better). I'm saying that because IMO using your own domain is crucial for privacy and control.
I choose Google one day randomly blocking my account over losing it to some random person from the web. At least I can make a blog post and try to make to HNs frontpage to get some customer support.
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#28Yes! Disable 3rd party cookies, delete your Google & Facebook accounts, and done. Easy peasy.
I use gmail and don't wish to give it up for now. I launch gmail in a site-specific browser process so that my login is isolated. This makes it so that in my main browser, I'm not logged into my Google account and they don't see where I go. As a bonus, the "filter bubble" effect is diminished for my Google searches. That's not a reasonable approach for non-techies, but I thought it might interest the HN audience.
Based on resolution of browser, user agent, list of plugins and all sorts of other seemingly unproblematic pieces of information one can build a unique fingerprint to track you without cookies. Most of it relies on JavaScript of course but if you use gmail you do run JS.
Go to this site and perform the test to see for yourself: https://amiunique.org/
Or the EFF one: https://firstpartysimulator.org/
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with companies that track that data." "Google DeepMind's first deal with the NHS [...] gave the Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) lab access to 1.6 million NHS patient records across three North London hospitals without patient's prior knowledge." "Google starts tracking offline shopping" Sure. Deleting t…
Indeed. It will take legislative action including no-knock raids on DCs and offices to rein them in. Someone in the NHS needs to be held responsible too.
It's interesting that you trust a government to execute a no-knock raid on a private company's datacenter (and extract only the information that is relevant without drag-netting unrelated private information) more than you trust that private company to secure your data (an exercise they have a vested economic interest in accomplishing).
At the end of the day, all of these questions always come down to trust and just trust.
Re: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online
#30Yes! Disable 3rd party cookies, delete your Google & Facebook accounts, and done. Easy peasy.
I wish that was enough. The articles that show up here on HN from time to time make me think they can cross-reference data and fingerprint you through many data sources and more advanced tracking (things that we discover from time to time like canvas, css). People that have you on their contact list, your e-mails that hit their servers even when you don't have a Gmail, DNS, CDN, cloud services, your phone unless you…
How difficult would it be to defeat fingerprinting by injection of noise? I.e. your browser configuration/characteristics change every now and then by a tiny amount.