Please watch this

[Bogstandard]

I picked this up from another engineering site, and I can tell you now, this sort of thing was one of the reasons I gave up on HMEM.

I just didn't want to make it easier for them.

http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_the_trackers.html

And this is where to get Collusion from

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/collusion/

John

[b.lindsey]

Scary isn't it John !!  That's why I don't do social networks, but neither is anywhere on the internet totally safe. Thanks for sharing the links.

Bill

[MrSleepy]

Don't forget Ghostery....which is very popular with the FF crowd..

"Ghostery? sees the invisible web - tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.

Ghostery? allows you to block scripts from companies that you don't trust, delete local shared objects, and even block images and
iframes. Ghostery puts your web privacy back in your hands.  "



Rob

[ziggar]

ill give a big huge  to Ghostery

its unbelievable just how many items it flags up on some web sites
i have noticed some sites with over 20 various different trackers, bugs and cookies
all that superfluous crap being downloaded is simply slowing down your internet experience and of no use to anyone but the instigators/advertisers..............

[MrSleepy]

Its very insidious...and you may not even realize its affecting you..


As the Gary Kovacs video shows.... the more data they mine from you...the more they track you... the more they tailor what they think you want to see.

Google searches produce tailored results now. I will not see the same results as you.. for the same keywords.

I search google through a scrubber ( https://startpage.com/ ) and use ghostery , adblock , and noscript. and that may not be enough.

Rob.

[Jo]

Ah, that might explain why Google search is increasingly giving me poor results. It seems to think that I am male and over 80... Its very wrong on both accounts.

Jo

[Maryak]

I watched the link Bogs provided, 

As a Firefox user, I downloaded collusion and left everything alone for a day. 

Next I tried to get Tor browser to link up with Firefox but the Add-0n has been removed from Firefox. Tor is effective but browsing is very slow, (akin to normal dial-up), who knows how slow it would be if only dial-up was available.

I have now:

1. Changed my privacy settings to not accept 3rd party cookies. NB, I thought I had this already but it would appear that every update to Firefox reverts to the defaults?

2. I Ticked the box, tools options privacy "tell websites I do not want to be tracked."  From what I've read, this is a bit meaningless as it appears we have another one of those voluntary code of practice issues.

3. I installed and activated the Add-On - "Adblock Plus."

4. I then reset the graph in Collusion and so far the collusion page is blank.

Here's hoping.

Sorry, I don't know about other web browsers.

Best Regards
Bob