
Everyone's Trying to Track What You Do on the Web: Here's How to Stop Them - ColinWright
http://lifehacker.com/5887140/everyones-trying-to-track-what-you-do-on-the-web-heres-how-to-stop-them
======
jbooth
I work in the ad industry. We take pains to make sure that everything is
hashed as early in the process as possible, so we're basically just
correlating hashes with each other. There's nothing personally identifiable.

I understand that it sounds creepy, but it's worth noting that advertising is
what pays for all the free content you enjoy on the internet.

EDIT: Downvoted for comments from the industry. Thanks! Let me know if there's
any questions I can answer for you guys.

~~~
slowpoke
The thing I have with collecting data, even if depersonalized, is that it's
practically taken without consent. I'm completely fine, for example, with
giving detailed, but anonymous usage statistics to Mozilla, because they
nicely asked me if they may do that, to improve Firefox. I'm not okay with
people just "taking" those statistics from me.

Tracking should be opt-in, not opt-out. I shouldn't have to tell you to _stop_
tracking me, you should need to get my consent to _start_ tracking me.

 _> it's worth noting that advertising is what pays for all the free content
you enjoy on the internet_

Which is why I whitelist trustworthy domains I frequent in Adblock Plus.
Again, opt-in.

Also, advertisement need not necessarily be targeted. You can run generalized
ads just as well. Sure, it might not be as profitable, but if the trade-off
for more profit is less privacy, then I'm afraid I'll give priority to the
latter.

~~~
jbooth
I can understand your point, although I have a small beef with the consent
point (you're visiting the website on your own consent, after all). More
importantly though, you're basically pitting your privacy against someone
else's money. Of course you're going to rank your privacy higher.

What if it was your privacy vs less content on the internet because more sites
go out of business?

~~~
alexqgb
Gosh I don't know. Maybe sleazy sites getting pushed to the margins would have
to develop non-sleazy business models or die trying. In either case, it's a
win for the Internet.

~~~
jbooth
Sleazy sites like the new york times? Come up with a list of your favorite
sites and I bet, aside from Ycombinator, all of them sell ads on the
exchanges. And the only reason ycombinator doesn't have ads is because it is
an ad.

If you visit a website, I don't see how it's such a violation of your rights
for them to take a note of your visit.

------
mrspeaker
Maybe it's just to reinforce the point, but Ghostery prevents 9 scripts from
executing on that page!

~~~
jgw
Indeed. I liked the bit where my browser did a lookup on
"track.lifehacker.com".

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brudgers
As if to demonstrate the point, the page does not load any content unless
javascript is turned on [Firefox], even though the server does not require it
in order to provide the article text.

One of the questions in my mind is in regards to Chrome, which I have not used
for some time. Does it still send keystrokes from the address/search bar to
Google servers in order to provide suggestions?

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think Blogger does the same thing; it kills Instapaper functionality. (Net
result: I don't read things published on Blogger.)

------
nodata
> We'd say Ghostery, AdBlock Plus, and Priv3 are the essentials here.

With Ghostery and ABP installed, why is Priv3 also required?

~~~
greyman
Good question. I tried Priv3 today, but it seems to be the subset of Ghostery.

BTW, it is necessary to use ABP, when I have Ghostery installed? (I don't
intent to block ads, unless they actively track me, like Adsense, etc.)

~~~
slowpoke
_> I don't intent to block ads_

May I ask why? I can understand whitelisting domains who you regularly visit
and use (and thus want to support with ad income) and whom you trust to serve
safe and unobtrusive ads , but I would be going insane without ABP on the web.
It's excruciating to use a browser without ABP installed. Imagine trying to
hold a conversation with someone while at least half a dozen of people are
screaming nonsense at you - that's how it feels to browse the web with ads to
me.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I could go without Adblock, but I absolutely could not use the web without
Flashblock.

If you run advertisements that automatically play sounds, you ought to be shot
and dumped in a river.

------
FellowesQi2014
FWIW, my Firefox privacy add-on stack is:

* Adblock Plus

* BetterPrivacy

* Ghostery

* NoScript

* PrivacyChoice TrackerBlock

* QuickJava

* User Agent Switcher

Yes, there is some overlap in functionality. And getting the configurations
correct can be a minor pain (none of them are ready to go after install).

I have also found the Chromium version of Ghostery cannot be configured to
block DoubleClick tracking. :-( So much for using Chrome-based browsers as my
main browser.

~~~
slowpoke
Another good add-on to consider is RequestPolicy. It controls cross-site
requests and thus blocks a lot of stuff before it even loads. It's a nice
complement to NoScript.

If you don't like all of the social media buttons (which are also trackers and
are, in my opinion, an eyesore), consider subscribing to the Antisocial filter
list[2] for ABP. It blocks all of these pesky, useless annoyances and removes
them from sight.

Oh, and btw: Chrome is Chromium based, not the other way round. ;)

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/)

[2]: <http://adversity.uk.to/>

------
dharmach
Is there any add-on similar to TrackMeNot which can regularly send request for
random web pages and obfuscate my internet history? TrackMeNot does similar
thing for search engines.

------
greyman
I use Ghostery and Https-Everywhere add-ons, plus startpage.com when I want to
use Google search engine.

------
barkingtoad
I'm so tired of this.

If you're scared, get a dog.

Or just read the "Why Should You Care" section and really think about it. Is
it so bad? Do they have your gramma's name and address and are they sending
the Depends cops over to check if she's peed herself? No, they have a bunch of
anonymous data that they never attach to you personally.

Everyone's trying to track YOU? NO, that's just some sort of weird narcissist
paranoia on your behalf. Nobody is trying to track YOU. Everyone is trying to
track EVERYONE. YOUR information is worthless on its own. NO marketer cares
about YOU personally and YOUR data is not worth anything negotiable.

If you're scared, get a dog.

~~~
nodata
What could possibly go wrong with individuals being tracked to this level?
Don't be naive.

~~~
barkingtoad
Explain, and while you do, remember that "slippery slope" is a logical
fallacy.

~~~
slowpoke
That's not correct. A slippery slope argument, given realistic risk and
possibility, can be a valid argument. And that is exactly what all of the
privacy concerns are about: risk.

I think we both know that breaches of sensitive and private data are a real
danger and aren't some abstract, theoretical possibility that never happens.
They happen all the time. Aggregation of personal data is dangerous by virtue
of existence, without even touching the moral issue of whether it's ethical to
try to spy into people's lives and habits for whatever reason.

Knowledge is power. And knowing almost everything about a person is one of the
most dangerous weapons I can think of. Even more dangerous is that most people
do not even _realize_ how dangerous that is. They are either unaware of it, or
worse, willfully ignorant.

~~~
killnine
My instinctual response to this debate is, if you having nothing to hide, why
do you care. But you're right, there is a very fine line somewhere here in
this quest for data collection, and as history shows again and again, the
entities collecting it normally get too greedy, or slip, look the other way,
etc, and the consumer ends up being taken advantage of, and having to learn
once more, these entities can not be trusted.

If there were more of an "opt-in" mindset to doing such collecting, the
situation would be a bit more balanced. I agree visiting a site and consuming
its content while demanding the site gets nothing out of it is not balanced.
But why can't we meet somewhere in the middle, with more transparency on what
is being taken, and more permission asking for taking.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> My instinctual response to this debate is, if you having nothing to hide,
> why do you care.

My instinctual response to that is to ask if I can watch you the next time you
go to the bathroom, or have sex.

