5 ms·

So, why not just block all HTTP requests to anything on a domain owned by facebook unless you are actually viewing a FB page?

by jiggy2011 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago
Yes, I use Ghostery (http://www.ghostery.com/ http://www.ghostery.com/) to do that.
beagle3 14y ago
There's Ghostery, of course - but I found it was extremely slow on my machine (as in, adding seconds of page load time), and while it is almost install-and-forget, it's policy is limited to what the maintainers believe. Everything else is "opt-out" with a GUI that's less than intuitive (or at least was, last time I used it - I haven't been following development in the last two years). But if you are using Firefox, the real gem for security conscious people is RequestPolicy. The default setting is that every 3rd party access is opt-in rather than opt-out. And when you start using it, you'll realize that there are reasonable sites, but that every news site and many professional bloggers connect to 20 different tracking services each (scorecard, aquantive, google analytics, facebook, twitter, google plus, doubleclick, mediametrix, ... the list goes on and on). Schneier's website, as a counterexample, only makes a reference to eff.org. Also, you get to realize the depth of referral links - I see some newegg links (from e.g. fatwallet or dealnews) go through 10 redirects before arriving to the actual website. And that Google and Youtube track every single click on their site, even though they work very hard to make it look as if they send you directly. Seriously, if you are security conscious, RequestPolicy is a must. It takes more work (e.g. a lot of sites rely on css and javascript from unrelated 3rd parties, and break horribly without them), but in return for 10 more minutes of work over a week, you actually have a good idea of who's trying to track you, and makes everything opt-in rather than opt-out or no-option.
anonymouz 14y ago
Try RequestPolicy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/requestpolicy... Of course Ghostery and NoScript are also quite useful.

So, why not just block all HTTP requests to anything on a domain owned by facebook unless you are actually viewing a FB page?

_delirium 14y ago

Yes, I use Ghostery (http://www.ghostery.com/ http://www.ghostery.com/) to do that.

beagle3 14y ago

There's Ghostery, of course - but I found it was extremely slow on my machine (as in, adding seconds of page load time), and while it is almost install-and-forget, it's policy is limited to what the maintainers believe. Everything else is "opt-out" with a GUI that's less than intuitive (or at least was, last time I used it - I haven't been following development in the last two years). But if you are using Firefox, the real gem for security conscious people is RequestPolicy. The default setting is that every 3rd party access is opt-in rather than opt-out. And when you start using it, you'll realize that there are reasonable sites, but that every news site and many professional bloggers connect to 20 different tracking services each (scorecard, aquantive, google analytics, facebook, twitter, google plus, doubleclick, mediametrix, ... the list goes on and on). Schneier's website, as a counterexample, only makes a reference to eff.org. Also, you get to realize the depth of referral links - I see some newegg links (from e.g. fatwallet or dealnews) go through 10 redirects before arriving to the actual website. And that Google and Youtube track every single click on their site, even though they work very hard to make it look as if they send you directly. Seriously, if you are security conscious, RequestPolicy is a must. It takes more work (e.g. a lot of sites rely on css and javascript from unrelated 3rd parties, and break horribly without them), but in return for 10 more minutes of work over a week, you actually have a good idea of who's trying to track you, and makes everything opt-in rather than opt-out or no-option.

anonymouz 14y ago

Try RequestPolicy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/requestpolicy... Of course Ghostery and NoScript are also quite useful.