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I think what you want is essentially an entirely fresh browser session for every website you visit. Pretty mind-boggling to what lengths we need to go in order

I think what you want is essentially an entirely fresh browser session for every website you visit. Pretty mind-boggling to what lengths we need to go in order to prevent companies from tracking us. That said most tracking companies seem to have devised strategies to construct fingerprints from data like IP addresses, user-agent strings and any other meta-data they can get their hands on, so the next step will probably be to restrict what kind of information can be learned about the browser environment via JS (e.g. getting exact screen resolution). Also, data exfiltration via browser extensions is still not a solved problem, there are very popular extensions (Ghostery for example) that are highly privileged in the browser and often collect a ridiculous amount of data. Really can't get my head around why browser vendors still allow that while being so strict on all other forms of tracking.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> Ghostery for example What data is Ghostery collecting?
- ThePhysicist 6y ago
  https://www.ghostery.com/about-ghostery/ghostery-plans-and-products-privacy-policy/ https://www.ghostery.com/about-ghostery/ghostery-plans-and-p...
iainmerrick 6y ago
I use “private tabs” exclusively on my phone now, and it works great with not too many downsides. On HN, I can browse just fine; when I want to vote or comment, logging in only takes a few seconds. News sites either just work, work with some nagging that you have to click through, or hit paywalls and other dead ends. I’m happy to stick with the sites that work and spend less time on the more annoying ones. Edit to add: I realise I’m still being tracked, but at least I’m making a best effort to limit it. So the idea of a completely siloed browsing session per site sounds great to me.
mckirk 6y ago
There's the awesome 'Containerise'[1] add-on for Firefox that lets you define containers for specific sites based on URL filter expressions. Pretty handy to e.g. keep Google cookies in their own Google container. (The only downside I've found is that, if you navigate from Google directly to a site belonging to a different container, the tab will forget its history and you won't be able to go back to the Google results using the Back button. You just need to remember to open results in a new tab instead.) Using 'Cookie Quick Manager'[2] you can also move your existing cookies for some domain to their new container, so you don't have to re-login everywhere after creating your new custom containers. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/ [2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-quick-manager/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-quick-...
- jsjohnst 6y ago
  > You just need to remember to open results in a new tab instead Google[0] and DDG[1] both have user settings which allow you to open results in a new tab by default. Sources are first results which appeared accurate: [0] https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-have-google-bing-search-results-open-new-tabs/ https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-have-google-bing-search... [1] https://ccm.net/faq/40410-duckduckgo-open-results-in-new-windows-tabs https://ccm.net/faq/40410-duckduckgo-open-results-in-new-win...
imhoguy 6y ago
Good luck solving Google's reCAPTCHA, it is nightmare if you have no tracking history. I think currently FF Containers is a best way in UX terms to isolate stuff. I agree with you that web extensions is still a grey area, pity they can't be configured per container.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

> Ghostery for example What data is Ghostery collecting?

ThePhysicist 6y ago
https://www.ghostery.com/about-ghostery/ghostery-plans-and-products-privacy-policy/ https://www.ghostery.com/about-ghostery/ghostery-plans-and-p...

iainmerrick 6y ago

I use “private tabs” exclusively on my phone now, and it works great with not too many downsides. On HN, I can browse just fine; when I want to vote or comment, logging in only takes a few seconds. News sites either just work, work with some nagging that you have to click through, or hit paywalls and other dead ends. I’m happy to stick with the sites that work and spend less time on the more annoying ones. Edit to add: I realise I’m still being tracked, but at least I’m making a best effort to limit it. So the idea of a completely siloed browsing session per site sounds great to me.

mckirk 6y ago

There's the awesome 'Containerise'[1] add-on for Firefox that lets you define containers for specific sites based on URL filter expressions. Pretty handy to e.g. keep Google cookies in their own Google container. (The only downside I've found is that, if you navigate from Google directly to a site belonging to a different container, the tab will forget its history and you won't be able to go back to the Google results using the Back button. You just need to remember to open results in a new tab instead.) Using 'Cookie Quick Manager'[2] you can also move your existing cookies for some domain to their new container, so you don't have to re-login everywhere after creating your new custom containers. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/ [2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-quick-manager/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-quick-...

jsjohnst 6y ago
> You just need to remember to open results in a new tab instead Google[0] and DDG[1] both have user settings which allow you to open results in a new tab by default. Sources are first results which appeared accurate: [0] https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-have-google-bing-search-results-open-new-tabs/ https://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-have-google-bing-search... [1] https://ccm.net/faq/40410-duckduckgo-open-results-in-new-windows-tabs https://ccm.net/faq/40410-duckduckgo-open-results-in-new-win...

imhoguy 6y ago

Good luck solving Google's reCAPTCHA, it is nightmare if you have no tracking history. I think currently FF Containers is a best way in UX terms to isolate stuff. I agree with you that web extensions is still a grey area, pity they can't be configured per container.