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Originally posted by: malibber
Without a VPN every time you land on a webpage the person that built that page collects a lot of material about you: What type of computer you have, what type of browser you have, where you came from, how long you stayed on the page, prior sites you visited can even be obtained, and most importantly your IP address which shows where you live and is generally accurate within a 5-10 miles
A while back I started opening everything in a new tab, even places I visit on a daily basis which is about 75% or more of what I do, with the hope that would stop any referrer association. If you are coming from a page like a car sales site then they'll assume you are shopping for a car and send you tons of car ads. If you go to the same site daily and do it from different pages they can develop a profile of all the things you are interested in. It's just a small thing, and I don't know if it really helps, (but suspect it does), but its easy to do.
I also use two Firefox add-ons: Cookieman Context and Better Privacy. Cookieman makes it easier to permanently block cookies from individual sources, something I don't believe Firefox 3.5 had. I don't even remember exactly how I set it up but as I recall prior to using it any cookie I deleted could just be placed again on my next visit, but now I have it set so once I remove a cookie that site can't set one in the future.
BetterPrivacy takes care of lesser known "flash cookies" and rather than print my own which I'd probably screw up I'll use their description of it:
Originally posted by: malibber
Without a VPN every time you land on a webpage the person that built that page collects a lot of material about you: What type of computer you have, what type of browser you have, where you came from, how long you stayed on the page, prior sites you visited can even be obtained, and most importantly your IP address which shows where you live and is generally accurate within a 5-10 miles
A while back I started opening everything in a new tab, even places I visit on a daily basis which is about 75% or more of what I do, with the hope that would stop any referrer association. If you are coming from a page like a car sales site then they'll assume you are shopping for a car and send you tons of car ads. If you go to the same site daily and do it from different pages they can develop a profile of all the things you are interested in. It's just a small thing, and I don't know if it really helps, (but suspect it does), but its easy to do.
I also use two Firefox add-ons: Cookieman Context and Better Privacy. Cookieman makes it easier to permanently block cookies from individual sources, something I don't believe Firefox 3.5 had. I don't even remember exactly how I set it up but as I recall prior to using it any cookie I deleted could just be placed again on my next visit, but now I have it set so once I remove a cookie that site can't set one in the future.
BetterPrivacy takes care of lesser known "flash cookies" and rather than print my own which I'd probably screw up I'll use their description of it:
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Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of 'Super-Cookie', which silently conquered the internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash- and DOM Storage objects are most critical.
This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them - since browsers are unable to do that for you.
Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin. Those Super-Cookies are placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion. They are frequently used like standard browser cookies. Although their thread potential is much higher as of conventional cookies, only few users began to take notice of them. It is of frequent occurrence that -after a time- hundreds of those Flash-cookies reside in special folders. And they won't be deleted - never.
The other thing I do that I've never heard of anyone else doing, (but I'm sure some do), concerns firewalls. I use Zone Alarm but it seems to me that any software solution has the potential for being breached, albeit slim. If you have a firewall that allows you to see incoming traffic it is pretty amazing how frequently someone is trying to probe your computer. I don't worry about it while I'm using it, but I find shutting down at night to be a pain so I installed an "AB Switch" like this:
It's just like a light switch except you run your internet connection through it. When I'm gone for the day or at night I just switch it from "B", (on), to "A", (off). Simple, and at $8.58 at Amazon its a pretty cheap and easy to use solution.
Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid, but the reality is they ARE out to get you and every little bit helps to keep them away But I'll also add looking into a VPN to my list of things to do. And I figured that if VPN's were more than other people wanted to do then perhaps what I listed above might be of use to someone.
