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In my opinion, browsers should block all third party website content by default. Yeah, I know, the interwebs will break if they actually did this. Well perhaps

In my opinion, browsers should block all third party website content by default. Yeah, I know, the interwebs will break if they actually did this. Well perhaps someone should come up with some kind of website quality rating which indicates that a site can be viewed withing worrying about the prying eyes of FaceBook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

pavanred 13y ago
Firefox + Third party cookies blocked + Ghostery + NoScript Can be a little inconvenient at times but seems justified now.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  If you're using Firefox, you might like a little add-on called "Cookie Monster", which lets you easily control which sites can set cookies (permanently or temporarily) and indicates whether the site you're on has attempted to set them. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monster https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...
  - LoganCale 13y ago
    In Chrome, you can use Vanilla. It may not have as many options, but it works fairly well.
Anonymous823 13y ago
I made a post the other day, but it got pushed off 'new' in a few seconds. Anyway, I thought someone should setup a simple one or two page site that summarizes the importance of not tracking visitors. Then, it has a few 'this site respects your privacy' images in a variety of sizes that you can copy and paste into your own site, if you agree to respect those rules. It would need to be a recognizable image and symbol. The image would link to the site above, that informs users how you respect their privacy and do not track them. Personally, I'd add it to my sites, because with all the recent concern about privacy, I think my users would appreciate this change, and it would provide some advantage over competing sites. I'd like to visit a site, see that image in the footer, and feel more confident using their service. I think it would be a good way to encourage change from developers. Very few are going to pull Google Analytics on their own. However, if they get pressure from their users to follow a certain privacy standard, and by doing so they can drop an image on their site to illustrate the change and potentially increase trust and improve their reputation, we might see some improvements.
- vu3rdd 13y ago
  I have more or less the same opinions as you. I wrote my browsing setup optimized for privacy here: http://rkrishnan.org/posts/2013-12-01-firefox-privacy.html http://rkrishnan.org/posts/2013-12-01-firefox-privacy.html Comments and further improvements welcome.
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  German Privacy Foundation does this
eli 13y ago
Quality rating? I don't see how that could possibly work in practice...
pktgen 13y ago
Here's my ideal security policy: - Cross-site requests not allowed without whitelisting. This means some setup will be required at first (for example, for separate image domains used by Amazon, Google, Yahoo, etc.), but after a bit it shouldn't be a problem. This also serves as a "better adblock" in some ways, as it blocks ad networks without relying on a database that needs to be updated. - All cookies blocked by default; whitelist as necessary - JavaScript disabled by default; whitelist-enable as necessary - No Flash or Java, period. If I need Flash for something, I'll launch a VM. Sadly, Safari doesn't support whitelisting for any of this. Chrome supports whitelisting of cookies and JS by default, but the Chrome UX is worse than Safari's IMO (for a few reasons, but that's another topic entirely). RequestPolicy handles the first one quite well, but is unfortunately Firefox-only.
- quesera 13y ago
  Safari is effectively ungovernable, and Chrome is part of the problem. Firefox is the answer. No other option makes any sense, if you're serious about this stuff. I understand that some people like the UI or process model of other browsers better, and that's where the evaluation of priorities comes in. The good news is that the days of Chrome's technical superiority are truly over.. Speed, memory consumption, rendering engine...Firefox is all there and sometimes better. Firefox is also the only browser with an ability to sanely handle tabs on the side, which is the only sane place to put tabs on modern screens. If I had to choose between sane tabs and sane privacy policies, I might have some soul-searching to do. I understand that everyone has their own equivalent, but be sure not to dismiss Firefox based on historical issues.
  - ars_technician 13y ago
    >but be sure not to dismiss Firefox based on historical issues. It's incredible how much inertia there is with that. The majority of the people I know that switched to chrome did it back when firefox was blatantly slower and that's the image that's stuck in their head. It's incredibly hard to remove and to get someone to try it long enough to change their mind again. Firefox has a tough issue with marketing right now. They need to start a nice "firefox is faster" campaign.
hnha 13y ago
this would just lead to sites using subdomains pointed to the ip addresses of those.
driverdan 13y ago
Disabling 3rd party cookies works just fine. I've been doing it for years.

pavanred 13y ago

Firefox + Third party cookies blocked + Ghostery + NoScript Can be a little inconvenient at times but seems justified now.

greenyoda 13y ago
If you're using Firefox, you might like a little add-on called "Cookie Monster", which lets you easily control which sites can set cookies (permanently or temporarily) and indicates whether the site you're on has attempted to set them. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monster https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...
- LoganCale 13y ago
  In Chrome, you can use Vanilla. It may not have as many options, but it works fairly well.

Anonymous823 13y ago

I made a post the other day, but it got pushed off 'new' in a few seconds. Anyway, I thought someone should setup a simple one or two page site that summarizes the importance of not tracking visitors. Then, it has a few 'this site respects your privacy' images in a variety of sizes that you can copy and paste into your own site, if you agree to respect those rules. It would need to be a recognizable image and symbol. The image would link to the site above, that informs users how you respect their privacy and do not track them. Personally, I'd add it to my sites, because with all the recent concern about privacy, I think my users would appreciate this change, and it would provide some advantage over competing sites. I'd like to visit a site, see that image in the footer, and feel more confident using their service. I think it would be a good way to encourage change from developers. Very few are going to pull Google Analytics on their own. However, if they get pressure from their users to follow a certain privacy standard, and by doing so they can drop an image on their site to illustrate the change and potentially increase trust and improve their reputation, we might see some improvements.

vu3rdd 13y ago
I have more or less the same opinions as you. I wrote my browsing setup optimized for privacy here: http://rkrishnan.org/posts/2013-12-01-firefox-privacy.html http://rkrishnan.org/posts/2013-12-01-firefox-privacy.html Comments and further improvements welcome.
dobbsbob 13y ago
German Privacy Foundation does this

eli 13y ago

Quality rating? I don't see how that could possibly work in practice...

pktgen 13y ago

Here's my ideal security policy: - Cross-site requests not allowed without whitelisting. This means some setup will be required at first (for example, for separate image domains used by Amazon, Google, Yahoo, etc.), but after a bit it shouldn't be a problem. This also serves as a "better adblock" in some ways, as it blocks ad networks without relying on a database that needs to be updated. - All cookies blocked by default; whitelist as necessary - JavaScript disabled by default; whitelist-enable as necessary - No Flash or Java, period. If I need Flash for something, I'll launch a VM. Sadly, Safari doesn't support whitelisting for any of this. Chrome supports whitelisting of cookies and JS by default, but the Chrome UX is worse than Safari's IMO (for a few reasons, but that's another topic entirely). RequestPolicy handles the first one quite well, but is unfortunately Firefox-only.

quesera 13y ago
Safari is effectively ungovernable, and Chrome is part of the problem. Firefox is the answer. No other option makes any sense, if you're serious about this stuff. I understand that some people like the UI or process model of other browsers better, and that's where the evaluation of priorities comes in. The good news is that the days of Chrome's technical superiority are truly over.. Speed, memory consumption, rendering engine...Firefox is all there and sometimes better. Firefox is also the only browser with an ability to sanely handle tabs on the side, which is the only sane place to put tabs on modern screens. If I had to choose between sane tabs and sane privacy policies, I might have some soul-searching to do. I understand that everyone has their own equivalent, but be sure not to dismiss Firefox based on historical issues.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  >but be sure not to dismiss Firefox based on historical issues. It's incredible how much inertia there is with that. The majority of the people I know that switched to chrome did it back when firefox was blatantly slower and that's the image that's stuck in their head. It's incredibly hard to remove and to get someone to try it long enough to change their mind again. Firefox has a tough issue with marketing right now. They need to start a nice "firefox is faster" campaign.

hnha 13y ago

this would just lead to sites using subdomains pointed to the ip addresses of those.

driverdan 13y ago

Disabling 3rd party cookies works just fine. I've been doing it for years.