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Is there ever going to be a way in this world today that one can simply not be tracked? I feel that most every device you use will have some company or another

Is there ever going to be a way in this world today that one can simply not be tracked? I feel that most every device you use will have some company or another tracking you. I'd love if people could post some ideas around this. I've done the (becoming) standard uBlock, uMatrix (which makes most sites unusable until you tweak it), setting up "do not track" and "no cookies". Using private browsing with TOR. It doesn't seem like any of this is enough to prevent someone that seriously wants to track you. So what are the next steps?

telot1 9y ago
Using a usb-live disk distro built from the ground up to be privacy first (i.e. tails) would be the next step up the “trading inconvenience for increased privacy” ladder.
- ianai 9y ago
  Hmm what about setting up 3 VPN servers in the cloud for your devices and have your router randomly connect traffic to them? Ie individual sessions stay on one VPN but new sssions are assigned randomly chosen vpns. This would probably do nothing to the invisible pixels and other stuff though.
cocoa19 9y ago
Some ideas: - Developing/using an open source, privacy minded smart phone. - Use cash or a vanilla debit card that doesn't track you. I was shocked that after I buy a very very particular and specific item at Walmart, I see ads all the time. I believe even Walmart is selling data to advertisers. - Ask representatives to improve privacy laws.
- roryisok 9y ago
  Or an "outdated" platform like (pre-android) Blackberry or Windows Phone
  - seba_dos1 9y ago
    If you're going to run outdated platform, at least choose Maemo :P
- AznHisoka 9y ago
  All the major retailers/credit cards/reward cards do. Acxiom is the big player that buys this data (to resell to ad networks like facebook)
- laurex 9y ago
  I think on your first point there is something in the works: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ -- if you don't, unlike me, use your phone for lots of things (like banking, work apps) that won't be developed for this platform, it might be an interesting option.
elorant 9y ago
Fight back. Start blacklisting companies that use such tactics and then boycott the shit out of them. You don't have to go after each and everyone, just the big ones to make a statement. The thing is though that most people don't care. Or to be more precise, they don't know enough to care. Apart from the HN community I haven't seen anyone else bothered with all this FB/CA clusterfuck. I've even read journalists who think that it's ok for FB to track you since they give you their platform for free. So basically it's just us against everyone else and frankly I don't see this going further.
- rebeccaskinner 9y ago
  A fundamental problem is that there are no, or at least vanishingly few, unbiased parties left to report the reality of the situation to lay people. Journalism is near-universally funded by the same privacy invading advertising systems that they would be criticizing Facebook for building- and that’s putting aside the direct dependence companies have on Facebook itself. Journalists aren’t stupid, they know what hand feeds them, and they are strongly dis-incentivized to call too much attention to the fiasco of advertising driven monetization models.
  - elorant 9y ago
    On the other hand, FB and Google take 80% of online ad spending so traditional online media have every reason to stand against them.
programbreeding 9y ago
It's all about having a layered approach. No single thing will completely protect you, and especially if you are being specifically targeted then you're basically screwed, but it's similar to putting bigger and better locks on your doors. If a trained and experienced burglar wants to get in your house, they still will. But the hope is you make it difficult enough that they don't bother trying. This site is far from perfect, but check out privacytools.io if you're looking for additional layered options for every service and app you use. I don't think it's mentioned on there but I would recommend setting up a pihole for good overall protection for your entire home network. Again, it isn't going to stop the government or someone else from really monitoring you. And it's just an additional layer. But it's a really easy way to block advertiser tracking for every device on your network.
malvosenior 9y ago
Stop using these services.
nol13 9y ago
They're already reading your thoughts from space anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
boudin 9y ago
I personnaly host all my data: * I have my personnal email server * I use nextcloud to synchronize my contacts, calendars and file * I have a XMPP server and manage to convince a few people to use it * I host my own VPN that I use from all my devices * I use searx for searches with no google, bing, yahoo behind I try to avoid using any services that try to analyse my behaviour (so no music service like spotify, no video service like netflix, no social medias, no closed messaging service...) I use ublock on my browsers in paranoid mode (block all third parties and having to whitelist what's needed for a website to work) My phone is an android on which i've installed lineage with no gapps and i use fdroid to get apps All this is a pain to manage (at least i learnt a lot managing all this) and can't definitely be done by people who are not interrested by the technical side It's also quite restrictive and definitly cut myself from a lot of friends. I still find it worthwhile though and am not interested in stopping hosting my own services. For me the main issue is that the web isn't privacy friendly at all by default, trying to make it so is not easy and is not something my parent, for example, can do, even if they want to. Right now Facebook is under the spotlights, but it's the scapegoat of a whole data business. I don't know why I should trust twitter with it's tracking buttons everywhere. Why should i trust CDN that centralise queries from a lot of websites. Why should i trust all those services plugged into websites? My feeling is that it can only be solved and usable by non technical people by having standards for a specific need and that does not allow this level of tracking rather than continue developping "everything" standards that HTTP, HTML, JavaScript and CSS are becoming.
- gear54rus 9y ago
  If the concern is them tracking you for advertising purposes, why not simply train yourself to reject all ads (blocking the most intrusive ones with adblock)? And then when you really decide that you need something, use all that privacy contraptions you are using currently to try and find what you are looking for without fear of being manipulated. That's what I've opted for anyway. Am I missing something? Perhaps spam calls are a problem in this case, but I've never gotten it yet thankfully.
  - boudin 9y ago
    I already block as much ad as I can (i use ublock in browsers for that), but tracking goes further than just ads unfortunatly. I use my VPN for 2 reasons: * host some services at home behind a non static IP * my ISP "steal" ip addreses to implement country-wide website blocking, which mean that their own routing can't be trusted I use my own DNS server also because: * of obvious tracking reasons * the same ISP leak data to yahoo when a domain can't be resolved (which means that it's a lying DNS server that can't be trusted neither) I just meant that I'm using is what I consider to be an acceptable solution to browse the web, but those are incredibely complex for the sole purpose of having a bit of privacy... And most of it has quite a limited effect to be honest. Having your own mail server for example is a bit useless since most people uses gmail, hotmail or something as bad. In the end, the main benefit is having providing yourself a better service than those... I still find the exercise of having control over as much data as possible quite interesting though.
Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
The fact that uMatrix make sites unusable is a problem with the sites, not uMatrix. My view is that if you (as a web developer) require code to make something on your site work you should host it yourself as part of your site. If you don’t host it, you actually have no idea what code is making up your site and won’t know if it changes because the third-party hosts will not play into your change control process. This is how Best Buy was compromised recently - they used 3rd-party code on their site that got changed from under them.
- Dibbles 9y ago
  Please tell that to all the people that host websites with Google Fonts. Block those, and the entire website seizes to work. Seems a little ridiculous for using a nicer font.
  - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
    My uMatrix configuration, which I'm pretty sure is mostly default, allows Google Fonts by allowing the CSS to come through. What really drives me nuts is playing JavaScript Whack-A-Mole just to read some text. Trust me, you don't actually need an AJAX call mediated by something hosted on code.jquery.com just to display a bunch of text and images. Web browsers have been able to handle that since before JavaScript existed, and they can still handle it today.
noisy_boy 9y ago
For me, the one thing that really worked well is setting up a blocklist (basically pointing "bad" domains to 0.0.0.0) and using dnsmasq to use that list. I've setup a cronjob to update the list daily so it was basically a one time step. I don't have metrics but overall loadtimes are much faster. Of course, this is limited to my PC so I'll have to set it up on my router for all devices at home to benefit from it (and even that doesn't take care of browsing experience outside home).
- luv2lrn 9y ago
  I like this approach. I'm using gasmask to help manage my hosts file: http://clockwise.ee/ http://clockwise.ee/

telot1 9y ago

Using a usb-live disk distro built from the ground up to be privacy first (i.e. tails) would be the next step up the “trading inconvenience for increased privacy” ladder.

ianai 9y ago
Hmm what about setting up 3 VPN servers in the cloud for your devices and have your router randomly connect traffic to them? Ie individual sessions stay on one VPN but new sssions are assigned randomly chosen vpns. This would probably do nothing to the invisible pixels and other stuff though.

cocoa19 9y ago

Some ideas: - Developing/using an open source, privacy minded smart phone. - Use cash or a vanilla debit card that doesn't track you. I was shocked that after I buy a very very particular and specific item at Walmart, I see ads all the time. I believe even Walmart is selling data to advertisers. - Ask representatives to improve privacy laws.

roryisok 9y ago
Or an "outdated" platform like (pre-android) Blackberry or Windows Phone
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  If you're going to run outdated platform, at least choose Maemo :P
AznHisoka 9y ago
All the major retailers/credit cards/reward cards do. Acxiom is the big player that buys this data (to resell to ad networks like facebook)
laurex 9y ago
I think on your first point there is something in the works: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ -- if you don't, unlike me, use your phone for lots of things (like banking, work apps) that won't be developed for this platform, it might be an interesting option.

elorant 9y ago

Fight back. Start blacklisting companies that use such tactics and then boycott the shit out of them. You don't have to go after each and everyone, just the big ones to make a statement. The thing is though that most people don't care. Or to be more precise, they don't know enough to care. Apart from the HN community I haven't seen anyone else bothered with all this FB/CA clusterfuck. I've even read journalists who think that it's ok for FB to track you since they give you their platform for free. So basically it's just us against everyone else and frankly I don't see this going further.

rebeccaskinner 9y ago
A fundamental problem is that there are no, or at least vanishingly few, unbiased parties left to report the reality of the situation to lay people. Journalism is near-universally funded by the same privacy invading advertising systems that they would be criticizing Facebook for building- and that’s putting aside the direct dependence companies have on Facebook itself. Journalists aren’t stupid, they know what hand feeds them, and they are strongly dis-incentivized to call too much attention to the fiasco of advertising driven monetization models.
- elorant 9y ago
  On the other hand, FB and Google take 80% of online ad spending so traditional online media have every reason to stand against them.

programbreeding 9y ago

It's all about having a layered approach. No single thing will completely protect you, and especially if you are being specifically targeted then you're basically screwed, but it's similar to putting bigger and better locks on your doors. If a trained and experienced burglar wants to get in your house, they still will. But the hope is you make it difficult enough that they don't bother trying. This site is far from perfect, but check out privacytools.io if you're looking for additional layered options for every service and app you use. I don't think it's mentioned on there but I would recommend setting up a pihole for good overall protection for your entire home network. Again, it isn't going to stop the government or someone else from really monitoring you. And it's just an additional layer. But it's a really easy way to block advertiser tracking for every device on your network.

malvosenior 9y ago

Stop using these services.

nol13 9y ago

They're already reading your thoughts from space anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

boudin 9y ago

I personnaly host all my data: * I have my personnal email server * I use nextcloud to synchronize my contacts, calendars and file * I have a XMPP server and manage to convince a few people to use it * I host my own VPN that I use from all my devices * I use searx for searches with no google, bing, yahoo behind I try to avoid using any services that try to analyse my behaviour (so no music service like spotify, no video service like netflix, no social medias, no closed messaging service...) I use ublock on my browsers in paranoid mode (block all third parties and having to whitelist what's needed for a website to work) My phone is an android on which i've installed lineage with no gapps and i use fdroid to get apps All this is a pain to manage (at least i learnt a lot managing all this) and can't definitely be done by people who are not interrested by the technical side It's also quite restrictive and definitly cut myself from a lot of friends. I still find it worthwhile though and am not interested in stopping hosting my own services. For me the main issue is that the web isn't privacy friendly at all by default, trying to make it so is not easy and is not something my parent, for example, can do, even if they want to. Right now Facebook is under the spotlights, but it's the scapegoat of a whole data business. I don't know why I should trust twitter with it's tracking buttons everywhere. Why should i trust CDN that centralise queries from a lot of websites. Why should i trust all those services plugged into websites? My feeling is that it can only be solved and usable by non technical people by having standards for a specific need and that does not allow this level of tracking rather than continue developping "everything" standards that HTTP, HTML, JavaScript and CSS are becoming.

gear54rus 9y ago
If the concern is them tracking you for advertising purposes, why not simply train yourself to reject all ads (blocking the most intrusive ones with adblock)? And then when you really decide that you need something, use all that privacy contraptions you are using currently to try and find what you are looking for without fear of being manipulated. That's what I've opted for anyway. Am I missing something? Perhaps spam calls are a problem in this case, but I've never gotten it yet thankfully.
- boudin 9y ago
  I already block as much ad as I can (i use ublock in browsers for that), but tracking goes further than just ads unfortunatly. I use my VPN for 2 reasons: * host some services at home behind a non static IP * my ISP "steal" ip addreses to implement country-wide website blocking, which mean that their own routing can't be trusted I use my own DNS server also because: * of obvious tracking reasons * the same ISP leak data to yahoo when a domain can't be resolved (which means that it's a lying DNS server that can't be trusted neither) I just meant that I'm using is what I consider to be an acceptable solution to browse the web, but those are incredibely complex for the sole purpose of having a bit of privacy... And most of it has quite a limited effect to be honest. Having your own mail server for example is a bit useless since most people uses gmail, hotmail or something as bad. In the end, the main benefit is having providing yourself a better service than those... I still find the exercise of having control over as much data as possible quite interesting though.

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago

The fact that uMatrix make sites unusable is a problem with the sites, not uMatrix. My view is that if you (as a web developer) require code to make something on your site work you should host it yourself as part of your site. If you don’t host it, you actually have no idea what code is making up your site and won’t know if it changes because the third-party hosts will not play into your change control process. This is how Best Buy was compromised recently - they used 3rd-party code on their site that got changed from under them.

Dibbles 9y ago
Please tell that to all the people that host websites with Google Fonts. Block those, and the entire website seizes to work. Seems a little ridiculous for using a nicer font.
- Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
  My uMatrix configuration, which I'm pretty sure is mostly default, allows Google Fonts by allowing the CSS to come through. What really drives me nuts is playing JavaScript Whack-A-Mole just to read some text. Trust me, you don't actually need an AJAX call mediated by something hosted on code.jquery.com just to display a bunch of text and images. Web browsers have been able to handle that since before JavaScript existed, and they can still handle it today.

noisy_boy 9y ago

For me, the one thing that really worked well is setting up a blocklist (basically pointing "bad" domains to 0.0.0.0) and using dnsmasq to use that list. I've setup a cronjob to update the list daily so it was basically a one time step. I don't have metrics but overall loadtimes are much faster. Of course, this is limited to my PC so I'll have to set it up on my router for all devices at home to benefit from it (and even that doesn't take care of browsing experience outside home).

luv2lrn 9y ago
I like this approach. I'm using gasmask to help manage my hosts file: http://clockwise.ee/ http://clockwise.ee/