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If you're worried about analytics and tracking / ads on your iPhone, consider installing Disconnect's Privacy Pro: https://lifehacker.com/disconnect-pro-elimin
by SEJeff 8y ago
If you're worried about analytics and tracking / ads on your iPhone, consider installing Disconnect's Privacy Pro:
https://lifehacker.com/disconnect-pro-eliminates-tracking-on-iphone-and-samsun-1786903257 https://lifehacker.com/disconnect-pro-eliminates-tracking-on...
It costs a few $$, but sets up a VPN profile that is generally always on. It just blocks all of the ads / "web bugs" / analytics stuff and gives you a UI to show how much. Apple cracking down is a good thing, but so is defense in depth. It estimates that it has blocked 8Mb of crap being downloaded on my phone just today.
- pdimitar 8y agoI've been pretty happy with 1Blocker Legacy but I never actually confirmed it really blocks trackers (creators claim it does). Thanks for the link, I'll consider buying.
- princekolt 8y agoWhile the concept is good, I'd be extremely concerned of using any third party VPN service, free or paid. You are basically trusting your entire internet usage to a single entity, and I think this is way too risky. One alternative is setting up a raspberry-pi at home running pi-hole and OpenVPN. While it is still not risk-free, it is still better than one centralized entity taking everyone's traffic. On the other hand, setting that up is still not absolutely straightforward, but it is getting better.
- MBCook 8y agoI agree. “Don’t like being tracked? Just let us watch EVERYTHING you do and we promise to stop people from tracking you.” You’re putting someone in the perfect position to track you far better than anyone else could. You better REALLY trust them.
- SEJeff 8y agoAgain, it uses a VPN to route all traffic on the phone through the app, which sends no traffic anywhere outside of your phone (confirmed via my home firewall showing no traffic going out). It uses a VPN to simply route traffic through the app to null route bad destinations. Make sense?
- gruez 8y agouse an open source one: https://github.com/julian-klode/dns66 https://github.com/julian-klode/dns66 https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard
- SEJeff 8y agoIt is not actually a vpn. It is a glorified /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 null route app. It doesn't send any traffic over any real VPN, so your worry isn't a thing.
- princekolt 8y agoThis is better than what I expected. However, unless the code is public and the user can audit that the app store version is the same as the one in the public source, there's no way to be sure the entity is not capturing user data through some shady way. And let me be the first to recognize the app store model makes auditing the app extremely difficult.
- stirner 8y agoDisconnect was co-founded by an ex-Google DoubleClick (ad) engineer, and hired an ex-NSA (dragnet surveillance) engineer. There are tracker-blocking adblockers for every platform that aren't made by people with anti-privacy backgrounds.
- SEJeff 8y agoAnd SELinux was designed by the NSA due to the 10 years or so of the Flask Security Architecture and made it into Linux. Under your tinfoil hat, does this mean that Linux is totally compromised?
- gruez 8y agothere's no viable alternative to selinux, but there is for vpn adblocking apps.
- SEJeff 8y agoThere are actually three relatively viable alternatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoyo_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoyo_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smack_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smack_(software) All three implement MAC (mandatory access control) similar to SELinux, but the context bits in SELinux are pretty much standalone for information assurance (DoD Rainbow book series has more info). Note my username comes from my SELinux experience :)