71–80 of 251 posts
I feel less paranoid now for my browsing process. Almost everything I search is in an incognito window, from shopping and research to programming and how-tos. And when I'm done with looking for a new dog leash or Python module, I close that window. Only things in my main browser are the regular sites I visit and am logged into (email, HN, reddit etc.) I started this after learning about the filter bubble but I've not…
I once had something similar, if not worse, happen. I was researching some network equipment, looking at lots of websites and comparing products. Then my desk phone rings. A call being passed from the switchboard - someone asking for the person responsible for IT purchasing. It was a sales rep from a network equipment distributor, saying they noticed I was browsing their website and wanted to help me through the purc…
You subscribe to website X, you opt-in to offers from third-parties, and this allows X to share your e-mail address with Criteo. Then Criteo sends you marketing e-mails for the account of Sears (but they surely don't share any PII with Sears - the e-mail is sent by Criteo).
The logic isn't that "browsing Sears is considered as having a preexisting business relationship with them". It's because users opted-in to third-party communications from a website they may have signed up with, back in 2008.
Other similar use cases include sending you an e-mail for website X when you browse website Y because they know you are in front of a computer/phone and this increases chances of opening e-mails.
Doesn't make it more or less "right" though and it's surely very surprising for users, myself included.
(On a tangent, what still looks like a legal gray area to me are the Data Management Platforms (DMP) - everyone shares user data in a big bucket/database provided by a common partner, all users are identified with IDs but not directly with PII, how much data can companies push/pull legally?)
[1] Not a lawyer but worked with legal teams on these topics. Laws still differ slightly depending on the European country you're talking about, but the GDPR will soon be unifying data privacy regulations. Right now the French and German Data Privacy regulations are some of the most restrictive ones.
> This transaction breaks a core promise using the internet: just because I visit a website doesn’t mean I consent to getting spam from it. No it doesn't. There is no core privacy premise of the internet, and certainly not one that everybody used it signed up for. I'm not condoning this behavior, but we're in territory that we don't have prior art for. It used to be totally fine for one shopkeeper to mention to anoth…
Huh? Outside of some tiny village the shopkeeper would not know the name and address of customers that are just browsing. If a shopkeeper hired private investigators to stalk those customers, following them around everywhere gathering as much personal information as possible, it would probably run afoul of some law.
You still have third-party cookies enabled? Go to Options in Firefox under Privacy, and set "Accept Third Party Cookies" to "Never".
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cook...
I feel less paranoid now for my browsing process. Almost everything I search is in an incognito window, from shopping and research to programming and how-tos. And when I'm done with looking for a new dog leash or Python module, I close that window. Only things in my main browser are the regular sites I visit and am logged into (email, HN, reddit etc.) I started this after learning about the filter bubble but I've not…
I wrote myself a web application called Tamarind that runs on my web server for managing throwaway mail aliases. "Tamarind" == "Throw-Away Mail Alias Randomization Is Not Defeatable" :) http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/tamarind/tree/README I log in with my IMAP4 user name and password, and then get a simple UI with a table of my aliases, and attached memo strings (which can contain URL's that get converted to links). I ca…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language...
I feel less paranoid now for my browsing process. Almost everything I search is in an incognito window, from shopping and research to programming and how-tos. And when I'm done with looking for a new dog leash or Python module, I close that window. Only things in my main browser are the regular sites I visit and am logged into (email, HN, reddit etc.) I started this after learning about the filter bubble but I've not…
> It seems like a hassle but it's no different from cleaning your feet before stepping inside the house after playing in the park. I mean, you can make that exact argument about every annoying thing you have to do that wastes 1-5 minutes of your time. But over time, especially as a software programmer, if you don't automate those away, it really hurts your productivity.
I feel less paranoid now for my browsing process. Almost everything I search is in an incognito window, from shopping and research to programming and how-tos. And when I'm done with looking for a new dog leash or Python module, I close that window. Only things in my main browser are the regular sites I visit and am logged into (email, HN, reddit etc.) I started this after learning about the filter bubble but I've not…
I use Self Destructing Cookies on Firefox. It burns cookies when you close tabs which seems a workable compromise.