8 ms·

I don't think you browse like I do

124 points by buro9 15y ago

caller9 15y ago
Actually I browse a lot like this. So there.
- ff0066mote 15y ago
  Me too. .bashrc: alias cookies="/usr/bin/chromium --user-data-dir=$HOME/.chromium/cookies" alias nocookies="/usr/bin/chromium --user-data-dir=$HOME/.chromium/nocookies --incognito" alias chromium='echo "cookies or nocookies?"'
valuegram 15y ago
I've found that there are times that some of those "features" can make browsing slightly more efficient. Cookies, cache, history, etc. have all come in handy at times. I have my chrome setup with the standard privacy settings, and then have my FireFox setup in full blown stealth mode. ...I then choose which browser I use based on whether I'm looking for speed and efficiency or anonymity and security.
robryan 15y ago
This just really doesn't bother me, Google knows some stuff about me due to what I have told them and machine learning, they use it primarily to show me ads they think will convert better. This makes Google more money, the advertiser more money and makes it much more likely that the ads will actually be useful to me, pretty much win win win.
- Nic0 15y ago
  I don't think the problem is what do they actually do with all those data, but what could happen with it. You can't be sure that in few years, they will use data for something else that ads, something that you're not agree, but meanwhile data are collected. You can't be sure what could happen with Google's data in 5 or 10 years. Sold ? After all, Google is a company, here to make money. Or even some weird law, allow government accessing those data, to track terrorism profile. Ok, maybe it's unlikely, but you can't be sure. What I'm sure of is that loads of data worths loads of money.
  - zalew 15y ago
    > After all, Google is a company, here to make money. Those bastards... and they force you to sign in for their email and g+ and picasa and.. oh, wait. Maybe I'll sound like a wierdo, but you can always opt out of using google at all and block them with ghostery or hosts. Problem solved. Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that data is the currency we pay for 'free' online services, and if we don't like the service or the 'price', we can just stop using it. It's funny OP uses gmail and g+ but is worried about profiling for ad personalization. Btw there is google analytics on his blog.
    - Nic0 15y ago
      >> After all, Google is a company, here to make money. >Those bastards... and they force you to sign in for their email and g+ and picasa and.. oh, wait. I haven't said that making money was bad, it's business, and that's the risk to know where is the interest. Sure you signed, but silly me, I wasn't thinking about all this when I first sign-up for Gmail, and sure as well I could resign, but meanwhile they collected data, probably much more that I can think of. > Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that data is the currency we pay for 'free' online services, and if we don't like the service or the 'price', we can just stop using it. You're right, I was answering about that to the person who said "oh, it's not that bad, the price to pay it's some ads that suit your profile", but the 'price' is indeed more than that. > Btw there is google analytics on his blog. It doesn't surprise me, his post sounds to me more like an easy "don't be evil" troll.
      - zalew 15y ago
        > It doesn't surprise me, his post sounds to me more like an easy "don't be evil" troll. yeah. He even made private browsing sound hackish with about:config while this option is a checkbox in preferences
      - jfoster 15y ago
        What is the price? I'm keen to hear examples.
  - Jach 15y ago
- jfoster 15y ago
  Basically, there are people who think that at some point in time companies will use data about them in some type of very bad way. No one has a real, practical example of this. If someone can describe a business model that will use this type of data about people's interests to do something bad to them and make lots of money, then this will become a theoretical problem. Even that hasn't happened yet. There's also all kinds of "don't track me" options available from Google/Microsoft/etc. as well as incognito mode in most browsers. It's time for people to find something else to worry about.
ghc 15y ago
This reminds me of the old days where people would encrypt all their emails, no matter how mundane, with blowfish. I'm pretty sure there must be some sort of inverse relationship between the effort you put in to hiding your comms activity and the amount of stuff you actually need to hide.
- DanBC 15y ago
  That type of encryption was more about preventing governments from reading all your communication. There was talk about ECHELON and similar data-traffic-trawling systems. The "risk" to the average person from those systems was very low. (Ignoring, for a moment, the jobs lost to industrial espionage.) But we know that gathering huge data-sets is important to many companies. Sometimes those companies are lawful (Google or Facebook) but sometimes they are unlawful (Russian criminal gangs). And even if they're lawful companies they may be using the data in bad ways, or not keeping the data secure. It is amazing to see what people give up in return for "free" smileys or animated cursors or a shitty facebook game.
  - ghc 15y ago
    I completely agree with you, but it matters what type of data we're talking about here. Facebook scared me off a long time ago with its policies and what it knew about me, but it's a different story with Google's personalized search. I don't worry about a company knowing my browsing habits. I worry about a company losing my credit card info or leaking my SSN or deleting my emails. Compared to those things, preventing Google from guessing my demographic via search analysis is pretty much meaningless.
steve8918 15y ago
I browse pretty much like this as well. I log into incognito mode for Facebook and Gmail, and everything else in regular mode. Incidentally, I also have about 50 separate email accounts that I use to log into various services. This helped me greatly when my Stratfor and my ps3 accounts were compromised, I didn't have to worry that a particularly important email address was at risk, so I just ditched them.
clone1018 15y ago
I don't browse like this at all, I really couldn't give two shits on if Google knows I like "Computers & Electronics - Programming".
hmottestad 15y ago
I've disabled 3rd party cookies and opted out of web history. So it has nothing to show.
- mangodrunk 15y ago
  Great, now you have perhaps a slightly less pleasing experience at the risk of nothing.
spydum 15y ago
i suspect quite a few people do browse this way.. i do much of the same things (minus last pass, i still use keepass copy/paste).
gumbo72 15y ago
So, he hates Google knowing what he likes, but he doesn't mind that they have his phone #?
- buro9 15y ago
  Google know exactly what I like, I'm sat in Gmail all day and have G+ open. And I own domains, everyone already has my name, email, number and address. What I disliked were: * Websites automatically changing state based on a cookie (forums that reset what it believes you've read) * To be on site B and have what I viewed on site A appear (adverts over-personalising kept creeping me out thinking there was a relationship between disconnected sites) * My searches being personalised (in the same way that Amazon recommended gets skewed by Christmas shopping, so my searches get skewed when my girl says "Can you just look this up for me", I also want to see other opinions so don't want opposing views filtered out) But I didn't dislike those things enough to do anything about them. They're just small papercuts. This browsing style evolved from using incognito and private browsing to assist web development, I continue to use it because it prevents all of the papercuts above.
shawabawa 15y ago
but what's he doing about the government mind rays? I have 14 different hats. I mainly use aluminium foil, but when entering passwords or other sensitive information I like to switch to pure tin, as that of course is most difficult to penetrate with mind rays.
zalew 15y ago
Your categories and demographics No interest or demographic categories are associated with your ads preferences so far. You can add or edit interests and demographics at any time. I don't browse incognito and I'm always logged in to google.
fdb 15y ago
On Firefox, I use the RequestPolicy plugin: by default, it only allows requests to the current domain, so nytimes.com can't access connect.facebook.com. You can enable requests to go through, so that reddit.com can access redditstatic.com. I think it strikes a good balance between blocking everything (a la NoScript) and total openness. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...
- jerf 15y ago
  "blocking everything (a la NoScript)" This seems to be a really popular misconception (presumably the name), but NoScript works pretty much as you describe, too. You do not need a plugin to turn "everything" off, the browsers all ship with that capability and have for over 15 years.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- Zirro 15y ago
  NoScript and RequestPolicy are best used together (as recommended by the creator of the latter) as they serve different purposes. This, plus a few other add-ons in these areas are my set-up and that works well.
  - fdb 15y ago
    You often have to trade off security for convenience – for me, NoScript is too inconvenient to be worth it, because so many sites silently break when JavaScript is not available. I sometimes dream of a browser that would just fetch the page content and no extra other resources, showing it like Instapaper. The reality is more complex: images, css, CDN's, dynamic content, ... RequestPolicy realizes the most important part of that dream: not telling Google, Facebook and a host of obscure tracking companies about every website I visit.
Pent 15y ago
I had nothing listed under the demographics, which baffles me because I use chrome, always logged in search, gmail, g+, picasa, etc Very quite odd that they don't profile me. With that said, I obviously do not care if they know all this information about me. So the article is true in this case as I do not browse that way (too inconvenient)
Terretta 15y ago
Have to mention Ghostery: http://www.ghostery.com/download http://www.ghostery.com/download "Ghostery allows you to detect trackers on the sites you visit, learn more about the companies behind them, and control their visibility into your online behavior." Works in most browsers.
- joelhaasnoot 15y ago
  It's a great idea, but it's not very removable on Chrome, it blocked all cookies till I reinstalled Chrome. May have been fixed by now.
- Toucan 15y ago
  Having already installed that I was mildly amused to find Google Analytics on the blog.
RobertKohr 15y ago
So he has no problem to the government having a back door to read all of his email on gmail.
- CWIZO 15y ago
  Would you care to elaborate on this? What back door?
ClintonWu 15y ago
If you don't browse like this, checkout Skim.Me (http://skim.me http://skim.me) to follow your browsing routine from one clean feed. We automatically load your sources and adjust the feed based on various data you allow us to access. All in the name of trying to save you time. If you do browse like this, then we're not for you.
- Donald 15y ago
  Considering the nature of your product, I'm immediately concerned about the lack of an available privacy policy on your landing page.
there 15y ago
I use Firefox's default cookie policy of "Keep until I close Firefox", which makes it behave like Incognito mode, but also the Cookie Monster plugin[1] which lets me easily whitelist sites or domains with a click to allow their cookies to persist. This is useful for sites like Hacker News so I don't have to login every time, and my bank which requires long-lasting cookies to avoid having to jump through hoops with security questions. I also use the Ghostery plugin which blocks a bunch of ad networks so they won't place cookies at all, but even if they do, they'll be reset when I close the browser due to the cookie policy. 1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monster/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...
rgrieselhuber 15y ago
They have your IP addrress(es). It's trivial for them to put together a profile on you.
Katelyn 15y ago
You are right. I don't browse like you do. That would take forever. I wonder: Are you afraid Google is sitting at home drooling over the fact that you bought your shoes from JcPenny? You’re not a name, you’re not a face, you’re a knode. a cookie. literally, a number in trillions of records. Secondly, you sit on the web writing openly about privacy issues, while overtly displaying your information on those "Identity tracking" services you use, like Facebook, which If you spent the same amount of time you spend writing about how Google is out to get you, perhaps would understand that while you're browsing incognito, Google is having a frenzy with your gmail content, building a profile on you that you may never see. At the end of the day, someone is always going to be collecting information on you, and your information will be again, one dot tied to your one number- among trillions of other records. There will always be internet ads. To wrap this up, my point is that if you really don’t wan’t to be tracked, then cancel your credit card, pay everything in cash, disable your GPS, avoid connecting via Wi-Fi, forget doing ‘good deeds’ like filling out surveys, or giving your name and number to a blood drive. Oh and completely disconnect your router.
- EGreg 15y ago
  depending on where he lives, he can still be tracked by CCTV, when he fills out his taxes, renews his driver's license, or any other number of things
- bryanh 15y ago
  I disagree with this comment: "are you afraid Google is sitting at home drooling over the fact that you bought your shoes from JcPenny?" I'm sure Google doesn't consciously care, but the fact that they track it it can seriously screw you if in the wrong hands. Further, at risk of building a strawman, it sounds a bit to similar to "what do you have to hide?" which is wrong on many many levels. Given plenty of data it would be easy to cherry pick information useful enough to cast some serious suspicion of a crime. People have been convicted on circumstantial evidence alone. Is it really the lay person's responsibility to worry about this? A silly example: "Where were you at 9:35pm the 3rd of June, 2011?" ... "I was having dinner and drinks with friends" ... "Really? According to documents obtained by the prosecution you bought shoes that night online at 9:29pm from JCPenney" ... "Oh, I guess I left earlier than I thought" ... "Court, clearly the defendant is lying about his whereabouts". /paranoia
wickedchicken 15y ago
The author can use separate chrome profiles for each logged in service. This way you can stay logged in while isolating your tracking to that tab.
- buddydvd 15y ago
  Your comment should be on top. Everything OP said can easily be done with Chrome's multiple profile feature. I love the fact that I can run _multiple_ incognito sessions at the same time without it being bounded by the number of browsers you have. Multiple Gmail sessions? No problem. You can just setup a profile for each email account you own without requiring you to sign-in every time.
EGreg 15y ago
You are right. As a developer, I would browse something like this: 1) Chrome incognito windows to test what people see before they sign into a service. 2) If I like the service, I would switch over to a normal Chrome window to see what a "typical" person would see. 3) If I want another identity I open another browser.
eiji 15y ago
There is one IE9 feature that I miss in Chrome or Firefox: "Preserve Favorites website data" under Delete Browsing History. With that I can delete all cookies after a session but my logins stay active. And I don't need an extension for it. Every browser should support that. And the OS integration of IE9 on windows 7 is superior to the competition.
joedev 15y ago
Everyone who think's David's post was about privacy and information security didn't read it very closely. He said at multiple times that the purpose is because he wants to keep out of "personalized bubbles", wants to have a broader view of web content and to avoid sites changing "some state because it knew who I was". It has nothing to do with what will happen to his browsing habit information or with dislike of being tracked.
- RandallBrown 15y ago
  it seems like a lot of effort to go through just for the off chance that an ad will show you something unexpectedly interesting. It seems like Reddit or Pinterest or even your Facebook friends would be better for that kind of stuff.
sarnowski 15y ago
Instead of installing 10 plugins, it may also be valid to use a browser who just has privacy as a main concern like http://openports.se/www/xxxterm http://openports.se/www/xxxterm
cypherpunks01 15y ago
I use Chrome's Vanilla Cookie Manager extension to continually throw out ALL cookies older than 30 minutes, except for the following which are saved over browsing sessions: (star).google.com, (star).workflowy.com, news.ycombinator.com It works really well, and I don't have to go through the hassle of using two browsers. Additionally not accepting 3rd party cookies and using http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ for ads. Not quite as secure as OP, but mostly does the job. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gieohaicffldbmiilohhggbidhephnjj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gieohaicffldbmiilo...
dennisgorelik 15y ago
"I use Last Pass to login to sites, it only takes a split second" Most likely every login is taxing him by 10 seconds or more (not split second) + interrupts his train of thought. He gains almost nothing in return.
therandomguy 15y ago
Why? Just to avoid relevant targeted ads?
tete 15y ago
Google tells me I don't have a cookie, which is a bit strange because I allow cookies. Anyway, looks like Google knows nothing about me either. I know a lot of things that could cause this, even tough I tried a few things it's hard to figure out why Google isn't profiling me. Is it maybe the DNT header, any of the disabled Javascript or the EasyPricacy list of APB? Maybe Spybot blocks something. Is there a way to opt-out for this? Maybe I never opted in? Anyone got an idea?
GnarlinBrando 15y ago
Google has no interests or demographics for me and I do not go nearly as far as this article suggests. I use adblock, wallflower, and antisocial extensions, as well as the do not track feature of firefox. But I am constantly signed in to gmail, frequently in amazon, and other places. Use firefox for all my browsing and don't really worry about it. If anyone wants to get information on me I am sure there are many more ways to get it than google anyway. While I like my privacy I have to accept that in this day and age it is relatively easy to find information about someone.
frudi 15y ago
Well, I tried opening the link mentioned in the article, but Opera told me it's blocked by the Content Blocker. So I temporarily removed the /ads/ filter and tried to open the link again. Got forwarded to a different url and now Opera tells me this one is also blocked. So I disabled Opera's AdBlock extension and tried to open the link again. This time, Google tells me that Ads Preferences requires enabled cookies. So at that point I gave up and re-enabled AdBlock.
fingerprinter 15y ago
Check my name. I KNOW companies know more about this person than he thinks. How do I know this? Because, once, a long time ago, I wrote browser fingerprinting software for a security company that then spun it to be used for nefarious purposes (I say nefarious, but really, it is nothing more than what Google and FB do today). That was when I left. The point being, it is really, REALLY, hard for someone to be invisible while browsing the modern internet. There are very few things you can do, but there are some things. 1. Install adblock 2. browse incognito 3. browse through a proxy (creates noise) and, the most important 4. use a plugin that randomizes queries to its components. For #4, I don't know of any out there that do this effectively so I wrote my own. The big take away from the article is that "nothing is stored locally"...well, most companies haven't been tracking that way for a long, long time.
- joemoon 15y ago
  > The point being, it is really, REALLY, hard for someone to be invisible while browsing the modern internet. Agreed. If anyone is interested in a bit of (slightly terrifying) evidence, take a look at evercookie: http://samy.pl/evercookie/ http://samy.pl/evercookie/
- buro9 15y ago
  I agree. I wrote a security layer for a sports video site to detect shared passwords by creating fingerprints of clients using every signal I could get hold of. However, the point of the article isn't "do not track", it's "consume without personalisation".
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - fingerprinter 15y ago
    True, though I would argue that the effort involved to 'consume without personalisation' has a low reward ratio given my first comment. Though, that is through the 'do not track' glasses, of course. If there is some other goal, it could have a higher reward ratio.
kylebrown 15y ago
And what kind of ads does google show to someone who it knows nothing about? Do all those ads I see for "work from home for $5k/month", "get ripped" and [screenshot of a social networking thumbnail of random girl] say more about me or everybody else?
stfu 15y ago
http://panopticlick.eff.org/ http://panopticlick.eff.org/ Besides all proxies, adblocks and incognito modes the world is still scary out there. No matter how hard I try, I always get a "your configuration is unique" message.

124 points by buro9 15y ago

caller9 15y ago

Actually I browse a lot like this. So there.

ff0066mote 15y ago
Me too. .bashrc: alias cookies="/usr/bin/chromium --user-data-dir=$HOME/.chromium/cookies" alias nocookies="/usr/bin/chromium --user-data-dir=$HOME/.chromium/nocookies --incognito" alias chromium='echo "cookies or nocookies?"'

valuegram 15y ago

I've found that there are times that some of those "features" can make browsing slightly more efficient. Cookies, cache, history, etc. have all come in handy at times. I have my chrome setup with the standard privacy settings, and then have my FireFox setup in full blown stealth mode. ...I then choose which browser I use based on whether I'm looking for speed and efficiency or anonymity and security.

robryan 15y ago

This just really doesn't bother me, Google knows some stuff about me due to what I have told them and machine learning, they use it primarily to show me ads they think will convert better. This makes Google more money, the advertiser more money and makes it much more likely that the ads will actually be useful to me, pretty much win win win.

Nic0 15y ago
I don't think the problem is what do they actually do with all those data, but what could happen with it. You can't be sure that in few years, they will use data for something else that ads, something that you're not agree, but meanwhile data are collected. You can't be sure what could happen with Google's data in 5 or 10 years. Sold ? After all, Google is a company, here to make money. Or even some weird law, allow government accessing those data, to track terrorism profile. Ok, maybe it's unlikely, but you can't be sure. What I'm sure of is that loads of data worths loads of money.
- zalew 15y ago
  > After all, Google is a company, here to make money. Those bastards... and they force you to sign in for their email and g+ and picasa and.. oh, wait. Maybe I'll sound like a wierdo, but you can always opt out of using google at all and block them with ghostery or hosts. Problem solved. Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that data is the currency we pay for 'free' online services, and if we don't like the service or the 'price', we can just stop using it. It's funny OP uses gmail and g+ but is worried about profiling for ad personalization. Btw there is google analytics on his blog.
  - Nic0 15y ago
    >> After all, Google is a company, here to make money. >Those bastards... and they force you to sign in for their email and g+ and picasa and.. oh, wait. I haven't said that making money was bad, it's business, and that's the risk to know where is the interest. Sure you signed, but silly me, I wasn't thinking about all this when I first sign-up for Gmail, and sure as well I could resign, but meanwhile they collected data, probably much more that I can think of. > Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that data is the currency we pay for 'free' online services, and if we don't like the service or the 'price', we can just stop using it. You're right, I was answering about that to the person who said "oh, it's not that bad, the price to pay it's some ads that suit your profile", but the 'price' is indeed more than that. > Btw there is google analytics on his blog. It doesn't surprise me, his post sounds to me more like an easy "don't be evil" troll.
    - zalew 15y ago
      > It doesn't surprise me, his post sounds to me more like an easy "don't be evil" troll. yeah. He even made private browsing sound hackish with about:config while this option is a checkbox in preferences
    - jfoster 15y ago
      What is the price? I'm keen to hear examples.
- Jach 15y ago
jfoster 15y ago
Basically, there are people who think that at some point in time companies will use data about them in some type of very bad way. No one has a real, practical example of this. If someone can describe a business model that will use this type of data about people's interests to do something bad to them and make lots of money, then this will become a theoretical problem. Even that hasn't happened yet. There's also all kinds of "don't track me" options available from Google/Microsoft/etc. as well as incognito mode in most browsers. It's time for people to find something else to worry about.

ghc 15y ago

This reminds me of the old days where people would encrypt all their emails, no matter how mundane, with blowfish. I'm pretty sure there must be some sort of inverse relationship between the effort you put in to hiding your comms activity and the amount of stuff you actually need to hide.

DanBC 15y ago
That type of encryption was more about preventing governments from reading all your communication. There was talk about ECHELON and similar data-traffic-trawling systems. The "risk" to the average person from those systems was very low. (Ignoring, for a moment, the jobs lost to industrial espionage.) But we know that gathering huge data-sets is important to many companies. Sometimes those companies are lawful (Google or Facebook) but sometimes they are unlawful (Russian criminal gangs). And even if they're lawful companies they may be using the data in bad ways, or not keeping the data secure. It is amazing to see what people give up in return for "free" smileys or animated cursors or a shitty facebook game.
- ghc 15y ago
  I completely agree with you, but it matters what type of data we're talking about here. Facebook scared me off a long time ago with its policies and what it knew about me, but it's a different story with Google's personalized search. I don't worry about a company knowing my browsing habits. I worry about a company losing my credit card info or leaking my SSN or deleting my emails. Compared to those things, preventing Google from guessing my demographic via search analysis is pretty much meaningless.

steve8918 15y ago

I browse pretty much like this as well. I log into incognito mode for Facebook and Gmail, and everything else in regular mode. Incidentally, I also have about 50 separate email accounts that I use to log into various services. This helped me greatly when my Stratfor and my ps3 accounts were compromised, I didn't have to worry that a particularly important email address was at risk, so I just ditched them.

clone1018 15y ago

I don't browse like this at all, I really couldn't give two shits on if Google knows I like "Computers & Electronics - Programming".

hmottestad 15y ago

I've disabled 3rd party cookies and opted out of web history. So it has nothing to show.

mangodrunk 15y ago
Great, now you have perhaps a slightly less pleasing experience at the risk of nothing.

spydum 15y ago

i suspect quite a few people do browse this way.. i do much of the same things (minus last pass, i still use keepass copy/paste).

gumbo72 15y ago

So, he hates Google knowing what he likes, but he doesn't mind that they have his phone #?

buro9 15y ago
Google know exactly what I like, I'm sat in Gmail all day and have G+ open. And I own domains, everyone already has my name, email, number and address. What I disliked were: * Websites automatically changing state based on a cookie (forums that reset what it believes you've read) * To be on site B and have what I viewed on site A appear (adverts over-personalising kept creeping me out thinking there was a relationship between disconnected sites) * My searches being personalised (in the same way that Amazon recommended gets skewed by Christmas shopping, so my searches get skewed when my girl says "Can you just look this up for me", I also want to see other opinions so don't want opposing views filtered out) But I didn't dislike those things enough to do anything about them. They're just small papercuts. This browsing style evolved from using incognito and private browsing to assist web development, I continue to use it because it prevents all of the papercuts above.

shawabawa 15y ago

but what's he doing about the government mind rays? I have 14 different hats. I mainly use aluminium foil, but when entering passwords or other sensitive information I like to switch to pure tin, as that of course is most difficult to penetrate with mind rays.

zalew 15y ago

Your categories and demographics No interest or demographic categories are associated with your ads preferences so far. You can add or edit interests and demographics at any time. I don't browse incognito and I'm always logged in to google.

fdb 15y ago

On Firefox, I use the RequestPolicy plugin: by default, it only allows requests to the current domain, so nytimes.com can't access connect.facebook.com. You can enable requests to go through, so that reddit.com can access redditstatic.com. I think it strikes a good balance between blocking everything (a la NoScript) and total openness. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...

jerf 15y ago
"blocking everything (a la NoScript)" This seems to be a really popular misconception (presumably the name), but NoScript works pretty much as you describe, too. You do not need a plugin to turn "everything" off, the browsers all ship with that capability and have for over 15 years.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
Zirro 15y ago
NoScript and RequestPolicy are best used together (as recommended by the creator of the latter) as they serve different purposes. This, plus a few other add-ons in these areas are my set-up and that works well.
- fdb 15y ago
  You often have to trade off security for convenience – for me, NoScript is too inconvenient to be worth it, because so many sites silently break when JavaScript is not available. I sometimes dream of a browser that would just fetch the page content and no extra other resources, showing it like Instapaper. The reality is more complex: images, css, CDN's, dynamic content, ... RequestPolicy realizes the most important part of that dream: not telling Google, Facebook and a host of obscure tracking companies about every website I visit.

Pent 15y ago

I had nothing listed under the demographics, which baffles me because I use chrome, always logged in search, gmail, g+, picasa, etc Very quite odd that they don't profile me. With that said, I obviously do not care if they know all this information about me. So the article is true in this case as I do not browse that way (too inconvenient)

Terretta 15y ago

Have to mention Ghostery: http://www.ghostery.com/download http://www.ghostery.com/download "Ghostery allows you to detect trackers on the sites you visit, learn more about the companies behind them, and control their visibility into your online behavior." Works in most browsers.

joelhaasnoot 15y ago
It's a great idea, but it's not very removable on Chrome, it blocked all cookies till I reinstalled Chrome. May have been fixed by now.
Toucan 15y ago
Having already installed that I was mildly amused to find Google Analytics on the blog.

RobertKohr 15y ago

So he has no problem to the government having a back door to read all of his email on gmail.

CWIZO 15y ago
Would you care to elaborate on this? What back door?

ClintonWu 15y ago

If you don't browse like this, checkout Skim.Me (http://skim.me http://skim.me) to follow your browsing routine from one clean feed. We automatically load your sources and adjust the feed based on various data you allow us to access. All in the name of trying to save you time. If you do browse like this, then we're not for you.

Donald 15y ago
Considering the nature of your product, I'm immediately concerned about the lack of an available privacy policy on your landing page.

there 15y ago

I use Firefox's default cookie policy of "Keep until I close Firefox", which makes it behave like Incognito mode, but also the Cookie Monster plugin[1] which lets me easily whitelist sites or domains with a click to allow their cookies to persist. This is useful for sites like Hacker News so I don't have to login every time, and my bank which requires long-lasting cookies to avoid having to jump through hoops with security questions. I also use the Ghostery plugin which blocks a bunch of ad networks so they won't place cookies at all, but even if they do, they'll be reset when I close the browser due to the cookie policy. 1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monster/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...

rgrieselhuber 15y ago

They have your IP addrress(es). It's trivial for them to put together a profile on you.

Katelyn 15y ago

You are right. I don't browse like you do. That would take forever. I wonder: Are you afraid Google is sitting at home drooling over the fact that you bought your shoes from JcPenny? You’re not a name, you’re not a face, you’re a knode. a cookie. literally, a number in trillions of records. Secondly, you sit on the web writing openly about privacy issues, while overtly displaying your information on those "Identity tracking" services you use, like Facebook, which If you spent the same amount of time you spend writing about how Google is out to get you, perhaps would understand that while you're browsing incognito, Google is having a frenzy with your gmail content, building a profile on you that you may never see. At the end of the day, someone is always going to be collecting information on you, and your information will be again, one dot tied to your one number- among trillions of other records. There will always be internet ads. To wrap this up, my point is that if you really don’t wan’t to be tracked, then cancel your credit card, pay everything in cash, disable your GPS, avoid connecting via Wi-Fi, forget doing ‘good deeds’ like filling out surveys, or giving your name and number to a blood drive. Oh and completely disconnect your router.

EGreg 15y ago
depending on where he lives, he can still be tracked by CCTV, when he fills out his taxes, renews his driver's license, or any other number of things
bryanh 15y ago
I disagree with this comment: "are you afraid Google is sitting at home drooling over the fact that you bought your shoes from JcPenny?" I'm sure Google doesn't consciously care, but the fact that they track it it can seriously screw you if in the wrong hands. Further, at risk of building a strawman, it sounds a bit to similar to "what do you have to hide?" which is wrong on many many levels. Given plenty of data it would be easy to cherry pick information useful enough to cast some serious suspicion of a crime. People have been convicted on circumstantial evidence alone. Is it really the lay person's responsibility to worry about this? A silly example: "Where were you at 9:35pm the 3rd of June, 2011?" ... "I was having dinner and drinks with friends" ... "Really? According to documents obtained by the prosecution you bought shoes that night online at 9:29pm from JCPenney" ... "Oh, I guess I left earlier than I thought" ... "Court, clearly the defendant is lying about his whereabouts". /paranoia

wickedchicken 15y ago

The author can use separate chrome profiles for each logged in service. This way you can stay logged in while isolating your tracking to that tab.

buddydvd 15y ago
Your comment should be on top. Everything OP said can easily be done with Chrome's multiple profile feature. I love the fact that I can run _multiple_ incognito sessions at the same time without it being bounded by the number of browsers you have. Multiple Gmail sessions? No problem. You can just setup a profile for each email account you own without requiring you to sign-in every time.

EGreg 15y ago

You are right. As a developer, I would browse something like this: 1) Chrome incognito windows to test what people see before they sign into a service. 2) If I like the service, I would switch over to a normal Chrome window to see what a "typical" person would see. 3) If I want another identity I open another browser.

eiji 15y ago

There is one IE9 feature that I miss in Chrome or Firefox: "Preserve Favorites website data" under Delete Browsing History. With that I can delete all cookies after a session but my logins stay active. And I don't need an extension for it. Every browser should support that. And the OS integration of IE9 on windows 7 is superior to the competition.

joedev 15y ago

Everyone who think's David's post was about privacy and information security didn't read it very closely. He said at multiple times that the purpose is because he wants to keep out of "personalized bubbles", wants to have a broader view of web content and to avoid sites changing "some state because it knew who I was". It has nothing to do with what will happen to his browsing habit information or with dislike of being tracked.

RandallBrown 15y ago
it seems like a lot of effort to go through just for the off chance that an ad will show you something unexpectedly interesting. It seems like Reddit or Pinterest or even your Facebook friends would be better for that kind of stuff.

sarnowski 15y ago

Instead of installing 10 plugins, it may also be valid to use a browser who just has privacy as a main concern like http://openports.se/www/xxxterm http://openports.se/www/xxxterm

cypherpunks01 15y ago

I use Chrome's Vanilla Cookie Manager extension to continually throw out ALL cookies older than 30 minutes, except for the following which are saved over browsing sessions: (star).google.com, (star).workflowy.com, news.ycombinator.com It works really well, and I don't have to go through the hassle of using two browsers. Additionally not accepting 3rd party cookies and using http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ for ads. Not quite as secure as OP, but mostly does the job. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gieohaicffldbmiilohhggbidhephnjj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gieohaicffldbmiilo...

dennisgorelik 15y ago

"I use Last Pass to login to sites, it only takes a split second" Most likely every login is taxing him by 10 seconds or more (not split second) + interrupts his train of thought. He gains almost nothing in return.

therandomguy 15y ago

Why? Just to avoid relevant targeted ads?

tete 15y ago

Google tells me I don't have a cookie, which is a bit strange because I allow cookies. Anyway, looks like Google knows nothing about me either. I know a lot of things that could cause this, even tough I tried a few things it's hard to figure out why Google isn't profiling me. Is it maybe the DNT header, any of the disabled Javascript or the EasyPricacy list of APB? Maybe Spybot blocks something. Is there a way to opt-out for this? Maybe I never opted in? Anyone got an idea?

GnarlinBrando 15y ago

Google has no interests or demographics for me and I do not go nearly as far as this article suggests. I use adblock, wallflower, and antisocial extensions, as well as the do not track feature of firefox. But I am constantly signed in to gmail, frequently in amazon, and other places. Use firefox for all my browsing and don't really worry about it. If anyone wants to get information on me I am sure there are many more ways to get it than google anyway. While I like my privacy I have to accept that in this day and age it is relatively easy to find information about someone.

frudi 15y ago

Well, I tried opening the link mentioned in the article, but Opera told me it's blocked by the Content Blocker. So I temporarily removed the /ads/ filter and tried to open the link again. Got forwarded to a different url and now Opera tells me this one is also blocked. So I disabled Opera's AdBlock extension and tried to open the link again. This time, Google tells me that Ads Preferences requires enabled cookies. So at that point I gave up and re-enabled AdBlock.

fingerprinter 15y ago

Check my name. I KNOW companies know more about this person than he thinks. How do I know this? Because, once, a long time ago, I wrote browser fingerprinting software for a security company that then spun it to be used for nefarious purposes (I say nefarious, but really, it is nothing more than what Google and FB do today). That was when I left. The point being, it is really, REALLY, hard for someone to be invisible while browsing the modern internet. There are very few things you can do, but there are some things. 1. Install adblock 2. browse incognito 3. browse through a proxy (creates noise) and, the most important 4. use a plugin that randomizes queries to its components. For #4, I don't know of any out there that do this effectively so I wrote my own. The big take away from the article is that "nothing is stored locally"...well, most companies haven't been tracking that way for a long, long time.

joemoon 15y ago
> The point being, it is really, REALLY, hard for someone to be invisible while browsing the modern internet. Agreed. If anyone is interested in a bit of (slightly terrifying) evidence, take a look at evercookie: http://samy.pl/evercookie/ http://samy.pl/evercookie/
buro9 15y ago
I agree. I wrote a security layer for a sports video site to detect shared passwords by creating fingerprints of clients using every signal I could get hold of. However, the point of the article isn't "do not track", it's "consume without personalisation".
- deleted 15y ago
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- fingerprinter 15y ago
  True, though I would argue that the effort involved to 'consume without personalisation' has a low reward ratio given my first comment. Though, that is through the 'do not track' glasses, of course. If there is some other goal, it could have a higher reward ratio.

kylebrown 15y ago

And what kind of ads does google show to someone who it knows nothing about? Do all those ads I see for "work from home for $5k/month", "get ripped" and [screenshot of a social networking thumbnail of random girl] say more about me or everybody else?

stfu 15y ago

http://panopticlick.eff.org/ http://panopticlick.eff.org/ Besides all proxies, adblocks and incognito modes the world is still scary out there. No matter how hard I try, I always get a "your configuration is unique" message.