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But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you? As for ad/tracking ne

by xg15 1y ago

But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you? As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know. I don't want to say those aren't good things to do, I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there.

gruez 1y ago
>But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you? My prior comment mentioned switching apps where possible, and Chrome/Edge is easily switched to Firefox that we can assume they're not used. As for Windows, that's covered under disabling telemetry, and despite all the misgivings about Windows "spying" on you, I haven't seen evidence advertising profiling data (eg. your browsing history, as opposed to something generic like your hardware id or ip) is sent to Microsoft. >As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know. You can partially mitigate fingerprinting by using RFP on firefox. It's not perfect, but installing linux/custom rom/self-hosting isn't going to do much more, if anything those will make you more fingerprintable. Moreover it's not something that you can fully mitigate, without literally living off the grid in a cabin somewhere. >I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there. Note my prior comment said that you can get "most" of the protection, not that it's "absolute".
- drnick1 1y ago
  One of the best things you can do for privacy is blocking all third party domains by default with uBlock (or uMatrix). A lot of sites will break and not render properly, but it's the best kind of active protection against trackers you can have. You then manually enable what you want, and leave all the rest (social trackers, Google/Adobe fonts, telemetry) off.

by xg15 1y ago

gruez 1y ago

>But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you? My prior comment mentioned switching apps where possible, and Chrome/Edge is easily switched to Firefox that we can assume they're not used. As for Windows, that's covered under disabling telemetry, and despite all the misgivings about Windows "spying" on you, I haven't seen evidence advertising profiling data (eg. your browsing history, as opposed to something generic like your hardware id or ip) is sent to Microsoft. >As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know. You can partially mitigate fingerprinting by using RFP on firefox. It's not perfect, but installing linux/custom rom/self-hosting isn't going to do much more, if anything those will make you more fingerprintable. Moreover it's not something that you can fully mitigate, without literally living off the grid in a cabin somewhere. >I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there. Note my prior comment said that you can get "most" of the protection, not that it's "absolute".

drnick1 1y ago
One of the best things you can do for privacy is blocking all third party domains by default with uBlock (or uMatrix). A lot of sites will break and not render properly, but it's the best kind of active protection against trackers you can have. You then manually enable what you want, and leave all the rest (social trackers, Google/Adobe fonts, telemetry) off.