Trackers Can Eat You Alive! Browser Personal Information
From LinkedIn
It’s common to assume that by browsing the internet companies are collecting boatloads of personal information about you and your devices.
If you go to Amazon and buy some toothpaste via their app or browser, then like idiots there will be ten different sites that start showing you ads for toothpaste.
No thanks, I just bought some…
Paranoids like me tend to torque down our browsers and refuse Javascript or cookies. Many sites stop functioning and become inaccessible.
Accessibility should be provided to all whether or not we want our personal information harvested right? Then it becomes inaccessible. Maybe the WCAG testers missed that.
Simple Things to Do
- Don’t use Chrome (or Outlook for that matter)
- Don’t sign up with your real email. Use a proxy.
- My email address is [email protected] — Duck sanitizes it for me before forwarding onto my real address.
- Some of the better options than Chrome are Firefox, Opera, Brave (though I heard they laid off some people) and MS Edge.
- On the mobile I use DuckDuckGo (they don’t support my Linux desktop yet).
- Block the trackers on your mobile phone with Duck
- There will be situations where the VPN may not like browsing external sites with poor credentials. Example was me trying to use the airport Wifi at Tulsa International. No way Duck would let me. Solution? I couldve turned duck off but instead opted for nice fast 3G from T-Mobile. Worked great and might even be faster than the WiFi (almost 100 Mbps is fair especially for Oklahoma…:-)
- It may be time to consider a Chromebook or Linux machine to increase your safety factor. I manage a group on Thin Clients and lots of choices. These days speed of application comes down to speed of your internet connection (unless you are running Windows)
Here are a few pictures for context, real context. These are from my mobile phone this morning October 10th. First one is the main screen showing 36,000 blocks in the last 7 days. Bear in mind that most of that time I was at a KOA campground on a bare minimum internet connection (1.1 Mbps)
Okay, that kind of sets the table I think. Here is a closer look at what they want from my Android phone (Pixel4)
As a PSA I just posted a note on HIPAA and Costco. Costco sued for HIPAA. Allowed Meta to track users on website.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/costco-accused-of-violating-online-customer-privacy/
I have the Costco app on my phone. I rarely ever use it (or the website for that matter). Anyway I thought I would open it and navigate to 2 or 3 places and see what was tracked. I went to Shop, then Pharmacy, and then Travel. 360 blocks from just 4 clicks.
Conclusion?
Never underestimate the tech companies. As Nick Danger used to say Relentless. They really aren’t much different than the Russian or Chinese hackers trying to install ransomware on your corporate computers.
This is an article by Kiosk Kiosks so a photo of some kiosks is mandated to appear relevant. Here is partial photo of CLEAR line at DIA and TSA Pre on Thursday morning at 6:30am. Line of machines twice as long.
