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joblessjunkie

Rendering Mr. Schneier on CNN's website caused my browser to send requests to:

- cnn.com and turner.com

- disqus.com

- facebook.net, facebook.com, and fbcdn.net

- imrworldwide.com

- cleanprint.net

- outbrain.com

- twitter.com and twimg.com

- chartbeat.com

- linkedin.com

- googlesyndication.com and google-analytics.com

- scorecardresearch.com

- doubleclick.net

...and yields an unending stream of pings to chartbeat.net just to let them know my tab is still open.

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I long ago installed a plug-in that blocks most or possibly all of the above. There are several now that will do this for, say, Firefox.

In a related benefit, sites load way faster for me and consume substantially less bandwidth, since I'm not constantly waiting and paying to download the malware that so many sites now feel the need to embed.

Which one do you like the best?

Ghostery takes care of most such things, including blocking the major spying tricks by the likes of Google and Facebook.

A decent ad blocker like AdBlock Plus will go some way to helping as well, though it's more of a side effect in that case.

There's also BetterPrivacy, which mostly deals with the non-cookie cookies like Flash LSOs.

Unfortunately, for reasons I can't fathom, even generally privacy-friendly browsers like Firefox still seem quite happy to send vast amounts of fingerprint-friendly information that serves almost no legitimate purpose to anyone who cares to listen. However, there are clearly people thinking about this, e.g., see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting.

There should be a default build of all browsers with "the most privacy settings possible" and allow people to install that.

Would you like to cooperate on this? I was thinking about this a long time ago, but I am full of other things to do and need some people to help me with that.

I am no startup-millionair, so please do not expect money, but if we build a small team that delivers, we will find supporters, I am sure. Please contact me at bughunter at riseup dot net.

Are you considering what the GP said, i.e. builds of popular browsers; or another browser entirely? I've been using Luakit a lot recently and it stands for a lot of the open and tweakable traits I care about in software. It probably comes with little spying mechanisms, and could be further strapped on with protections.

Privacy-friendly (as far as it can go) builds of available OS browsers is the way to go.

There are simple things, like changing the default settings for cookies, that do not require rebuild of course, and more involved things like making the browsers emit less information (panopticlick) on every request.

It is obvious, that it might break some things, which should then be possible to change by the user. E.g. not sending out installed fonts and screensize and tons of other info about your system might break some websites - webmasters should learn to ask friendly for that data, not expecting it.

This is not about engineering a new browser, but about privacy aware defaults for software distribution.

The biggest success of such a project would be that browser distributors will change their default distribution to maximum privacy. Obviously some of them will never do it - what will be a good thing as people will better learn about the differences.

Another big success would be that users will learn about their natural right to be asked before a browser sends out any information that is not absolutely needed to view a webpage.

I know that this is only a small piece in the puzzle, but browsers are still not privacy aware by default atm. it would be interesting to see what happens next.

Firefox certainly is one of the top targets for such a project, as Mozilla browser defaults are not acceptable for a project that wants to teach you about your online rights on first browser start. Transforming Firefox into a browser that actually delivers what Mozilla promises, will give a good discussion point for changing their distribution policy.

There is, btw., a similar project for chrome, Iron - but the panopticlick results for iron are still not perfect - minimizin the emitted information to only the neccessary bits is still ahead also for this browser.

Please note: a discussion about "destroying jobs in the ad industry" or "destroying the internet at all" is absurd in this context. If advertisers want to collect data, they must ask me to agree. It is good for the internet future, if only business models survive, that people agree to support.

Not a default build from Mozilla but the Tor Browser Bundle[1] is exactly this.

1: https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

I learned recently that Ghostery is owned by Evidon [1] and thus no longer trust it.

My solution on Chrome is AdBlock, NoScript, turn off Flash, and turn off third-party cookies.

I prefer Firefox, which I additionally use CookieSafe, BetterPrivacy, and RefControl.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidon

Besides a certain feeling about the company, do you have any hard facts that might give some suggestions about ghostery not beeing trustworthy?

If you do not agree to send them data (config wizard first checkbox I think), is there still data sent to them?

Feelings are ok, but keep them for your friends and family. We need facts here, so please deliver.

I have absolutely no facts whatsoever that they are misusing information. The only fact is that they have an obvious conflict of interest. I assume people interested in privacy would like to be aware of it. I'm sorry that you don't consider it relevant but I am certain others do.

I consider it relevant, otherwise I would not haved asked.

I learned recently that Ghostery is owned by Evidon and thus no longer trust it.

For what it's worth, they have a clear statement in their legal docs about the data they send back (or the absence of such data, if you disable things like GhostRank).

Moreover, the source code is unobfuscated and can be viewed directly in your profile directory in Firefox if you want to audit it yourself.

I agree that any conflict of interest should be considered with care, but it would be hard for them to be significantly more transparent than they already are being.

This doesn't have to be a conflict of interest (as they list themselves when they appear), but rather an attempt at self-regulation. Ghostery, and Scott Meyer, has done a lot to advance the discussion of privacy in advertising; they are educating the consumer-giving them tools that make it more difficult to do their job, or at least doing it in a shady and lucrative way for the good of the consumer and the industry.

Similarly much of the opt-out discussions as well as the ad choices icons are industry-driven.

Firefox is NOT privacy-friendly. The default settings save cookies forever and there is no blocking of any tracking code by default - you are spreading misinformation declaring FF as "privacy-friendly". Another big problem is the fingerprintable request firefox generates - FF developers do not seem to see privacy as a concern.

My solution is overly simplistic, but one of the reasons I like services such as viewtext.org is faster and more private browsing.

That's what annoys me about the modern web. I don't mind sites leaving a cookie on my computer when I visit them but unrelated sites shouldn't be doing that or tracking me.

ghostery blocked 8 of 10 (I have google and twitter unblocked).

Wow, that's quite a fingerprint.

A Panopticon fog generator onto a mass -NOT denial of `service' -but to make their revenue model dysfunctional with noise?

chaff noise `advert sense'...

If not too much bandwidth, ... resources, just shooting off the cuff here,

take the extent cookies, or a recent collective hosted history, net-wide or on your device, a background bot follows/generates false click bread-crumbs to foul their net-wide pattern/action?

falsify by padding certain advert eyeball counts to skew their billing?

etc?

Check out Collusion, others? -a firefox add-on listing who follows you.

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