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How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

nytimes.com

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#42

> 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…

I would suggest Privacy Badger nowadays (as a complement to the irreplaceable uBlock origin).

Does Privacy Badger do something that uBlock Origin does not?

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#43
> Nearby patrons, using their phones or laptops, can easily see everything you’re sending or receiving — email and website contents, for example — using free “sniffer” programs.

Is the author assuming the absence of https encryption here, or is there some widely available exploit I don't know about?

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"." works the same way.

Not the same way. The dot would be filtered out, but the part after the dot won't get removed, so john.smith@gmail.com is equivalent to johnsmith@gmail.com.

Ah, you're right of course. I was too quick to reply. Sorry.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest Privacy Badger nowadays (as a complement to the irreplaceable uBlock origin).

Does Privacy Badger do something that uBlock Origin does not?

Instead of having built in lists, it dynamically tries to track the trackers and block domains/cookies it thinks are trying to track you.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest Privacy Badger nowadays (as a complement to the irreplaceable uBlock origin).

Does Privacy Badger do something that uBlock Origin does not?

Been wondering this for a while even though I have both installed

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#47
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fastmail supports a variation of this: if my email is me@mydomain.com, then I can use service+me@mydomain.com, or better service@me.mydomain.com (or anything@me.mydomain.com). It seems like it'd be a little less obvious to scammers.

With fastmail you can just make a alias. My address is me@mydomain.com and in the settings you can make a alias where you can just use something like garbage@mydomain.com https://i.imgur.com/UWoU4NA.png

Fastmail also lets you use wildcards and catchall addresses, giving you infinite email addresses whenever you need them, with no way to tell what “base address” they resolve to internally.

For example, my Twitter address might be twitter@mydomain.com, my Google address google@mydomain.com and so on. All of those go straight to my inbox unless I decide to set up individual filters for them.

The downside is that I can’t easily migrate to a service that doesn’t support this.

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#49
post #33
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!

fastmail supports a variation of this: if my email is me@mydomain.com, then I can use service+me@mydomain.com, or better service@me.mydomain.com (or anything@me.mydomain.com). It seems like it'd be a little less obvious to scammers.

Shout-out to my new mail provider Migadu [0] whose model is “pay for the number of emails you send, not the number of mailboxes you have”. This opens up all sorts of interesting opportunities.

Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

[0]: https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html

Re: How to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet

#50
post #33
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!

fastmail supports a variation of this: if my email is me@mydomain.com, then I can use service+me@mydomain.com, or better service@me.mydomain.com (or anything@me.mydomain.com). It seems like it'd be a little less obvious to scammers.

I have been using this system for about a year, and it works great. I generally use the pattern yourdomain.com@accounts.mydomain.net. However, I have found from time to time that I never get account signup/confirmation emails to these addresses. It seems like they're being silently rejected. Does anyone know if there's some kind of email validation service that might be filtering these?

I guess I could use a hash of the domain (eg asdffdsa@accounts.mydomain.net) to make my strategy less visible, but that feels like I'm probably overthinking it.

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