
Improve your privacy in the age of mass surveillance (2017) - shocks
https://web.archive.org/web/20181107150700/https://iotdarwinaward.com/post/improve-your-privacy-in-age-of-mass-surveillance/
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jstanley
> if you search for «illegal Irish potato recipes», it’ll inject similar
> searches such as «fun Irish drinking games» and «funny potato pictures».
> Google will now see your relevant but also irrelevant queries making it hard
> to distinguish what you actually searched for. This will give us a layer of
> «plausible deniability» in case anyone accuses you of a crime you never
> committed based on your search history stored at Google.

This is pretty implausibly deniable.

"Yes, officer, I know my computer searched for that, but that's only because I
installed some software to deliberately search for things so that if I ever
got suspected of a crime based on my search history I'd be able to tell you
that it might not have been me"

~~~
tyingq
You could go for the plausible insanity defense angle, having it occasionally
inject things like: _" How to sculpt myself an imaginary friend from butter"_

~~~
achievingApathy
At that point, would he still be imaginary?

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jchook
“This article is probably full of potholes, errors and half-baked thoughts.”

To chip in some thoughts:

1\. If you use chrome, you cannot fully disable tracking. Even if you use
chromium, you can’t enable sign-in, which pretty well neuters a lot of great
features. Even Firefox collects info about you so you need to configure it
more than he says.

2\. AdNauseam, etc esp _with_ Adblock seems extremely questionable.

3\. If you use Google.com, Android OS, or any google services, they track you.
So much for installing Firefox and uBlock...

4\. Install a privacy tool like Privacy Badger or Disconnect. Surprised I
didn’t see this on the list, even from 2017.

~~~
Nanocurrency
Shouldn't the hosts file from
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)
\+ uBlock Origin + uBlock Origin Extra be the perfect anti-tracking combo?

~~~
tlavoie
IIRC, Privacy Badger is less focused on static (or even updated) lists of bad
sites, but figures things out based on behavior. Basically it's learning on
the go.

[https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#How-is-Privacy-
Badger-...](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#How-is-Privacy-Badger-
different-from-Disconnect,-Adblock-Plus,-Ghostery,-and-other-blocking-
extensions)

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Nanocurrency
On Firefox, this one needs to be on: "privacy.trackingprotection.enabled", so
without the ".ui" part specified in the article.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Setting tracking protection to on also forces Do Not Track to turn on, which
can be counterproductive if you want to avoid fingerprinting. I prefer to use
uBlock Origin and Privacy Possum.

~~~
ignoramous
Switch to uMatrix if you have enough know-how to fix websites that break. It
is the single best plugin I know. I use it on Firefox mobile and it speeds up
websites faster than AMP.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I used the advanced mode in uBlock Origin with default-deny on all 3rd-party
frames and scripts for a while. It does get tiring after a while to go in and
noop sites to fall back to the filter lists, and reload. Rinse and repeat
until the site works. It's especially annoying on mobile.

It especially tends to break online payment solutions, I've had more than one
purchase go haywire, including one where I just got the "order confirmed!"
page instantly, without ever entering any payment details. Their support guy
was a little bit confused about that one ;-)

So now I put my trust in the block lists, Privacy Possum, Decentraleyes and
Firefox' built-in fingerprinting resistance function
("privacy.resistFingerprinting" in about:config).

The latest additions are Multi-Account Containers and Temporary Containers.
Every new site opens in a sandboxed temporary container that gets deleted 15
minutes after I close the last tab in it. This discards all cookies, cache,
everything stored about that site, except browsing history entries. Think of
it as a cookie autodelete on steroids. I have permanent containers set up for
sites where I want to store the login or other information, such as HN or FB.
Each site can only see its own container, so there's no cross-site tracking.

~~~
privacywall
You seem to be a privacy expert. PrivacyWall will not break these payment
solutions. We'd love your feedback on PrivacyWall. It's free for download at
[http://www.privacywall.org](http://www.privacywall.org)

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SqwRock
Good read, thanks for sharing. For chrome users I'd advise using these
extensions: I use Surfshark chrome extension for a VPN, PrivacyBadger,
cookieautodelete, HTTPS everywhere, User Agent switcher if you're being sort
of paranoid. I have CCleaner installed too, but usually there's nothing to
clean since extensions handle most of it.

~~~
908087
I assume surfshark is a "free VPN" extension? If so, you're probably doing the
opposite of protecting your privacy by using it.

Using Chrome is also generally a poor choice.

~~~
SqwRock
Surfshark is a paid VPN, I would never choose to use a free VPN. Furthermore,
Surfshark has been audited by Cure53 to check their browser extension security
and got a good review [https://cure53.de/pentest-
report_surfshark.pdf](https://cure53.de/pentest-report_surfshark.pdf) To put
it short they earned my trust.

And I use several browsers, totally agree Chrome is a poor choice but I don't
expect people stop using it, might as well use it as safely as possible :)

~~~
908087
Out of curiosity, why would you choose a browser extension over an actual VPN
that tunnels all of your traffic?

