Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for figuring out how they do it...

That said since a (very) long time I'm using separate Linux user accounts to: check my professional email + G+, surf my personal email + G+ + FB (my FB is using a fake but plausible name) and a third one to surf the Web.

The one surfing the Web is linked to a fake online identity: entirely made up, with fake friends / fake G+ circles, fake StackOverflow / OpenID and basically fake everything.

I then only ever surf using a transparent proxy for anything "work related": the IP can't be linked to my fake IP.

It's not difficult to set up: I did set up the transparent company Web proxy (VPN would to too) myself and basically Linux user accounts take care of the rest.

Now I'll start using different browsers too and, why not, maybe Tor in one of the account.

I take it I could take all this a step further and whitelist websites that my "personal" account is allowed to connect to (using iptables' owner-uid mod).

That seems extreme. Why not open your e-mail and social networks in incognito/private windows? Personally, I use a browser add-on to remove trackers, but I realise that isn't 100% foolproof.

Some require cookies to be enabled (Facebook I know does), so they networks won't let you log in in a private mode.

Chrome Incognito mode (at least) allows cookies, though- it just isolates them to the incognito window and destroys them on close. I just logged into FB and it worked fine.

Correct, cookies are stored for the duration of an incognito session.

I find it a little annoying though that cookies are not sandboxed by tab, rather than by window/session. If I log into FB in incognito, and then do a little more private browsing in a new tab the FB cookies are still accessible in the other tab.

I guess I could be more vigilant with my browsing habits but I think this is a fair feature to implement at browser rather than forcing user to jump through more hoops to protect privacy. On a side note, when will chrome finally offer API hooks to allow NoScript to be developed for it?!

I'll second this. I find Incognito windows really useful when I want to hop on my wife's laptop and check FB/email/the handful of other things we both have accounts on.

Curious what your friends say/think about the fake fb name as the main value of facebook comes from connecting with your friends..

Several of my friends use pseudonyms on Facebook, although ones that are usually recognisable as manglings of their real names ("John A Smith" -> "Jonas Mith", say). In their cases, I believe the main intent is to stop prospective employers finding their drunken-student-party photos, but I guess it might contribute to privacy in other small ways too.

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