Extricating Yourself From Google's Tentacles

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

It just seems some smart legal eagle out there could come up with a way for each of us to copyright our personal info as intellectual property. Then they would have to pay us to resend the info anywhere. we would be owed $ for any use of it. I mean let's face it, Lady Gaga's name is copyrighted....

Kind of a silly idea.

First:

Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga


[... waits for bill... nothing. I bet you didn't get a bill either]

Secondly, The US needs less lawsuits, not more. Example A - Malpractice insurance is a significant contributor to the cost of healthcare in the US.

[Delancey]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

The guilty until innocent idea you mean, minority report cant be far behind

Dave

What I mean is, the terrorists started learning the hard way about phone metadata ten years ago when cell phones and the guys holding them started vaporizing suddenly.

Government spies routinely spy on other governments and understand the ways and means of this activity, after all its their stock-in-trade.

Neither one of these groups can be expected to change their behavior in light of recent revelations because none of this is new news to them.

Nor is it really new news to people who read a lot and are good at connecting the dots. That leaves a lot of other people whose whole life stories up to this point have been recorded.

Now all of the sudden, there is a change in their behavior, that you can recognize because you already know everything about their behavior, and that change in behavior will tell you something you didn't know. Then these people begin new behaviors with the misbelief that they are somehow newly anonymous and beyond observation because of their new behavior, and you learn even more.


This comes to mind-

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
- Donald Rumsfeld

[Dsanduril]

An interesting (and scary) topic. How about we take it back to sailing? How many cruisers use Yotreps or Winlink? Now I can go to Shiptrak and get 10 year old position reports. Maybe Customs takes a look at those when I check in? How close to Cuba was I? Is there a hole in the data near there?

Then the new versions, SPOT, DeLorme, ... We use those in the name of safety, or keeping our friends up to date (see Boaty's delivery thread), but it all goes into the same big data pile and could be used for other reasons. We go cruising to get away from these things, and then still want to know where to find the free wifi, best bullet antenna, ....

[letsgetsailing3]

Originally Posted by Delancey

This comes to mind-

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld

The sad bit is that though that almost sounds like circular logic, it's 100% correct.

So I guess the smartest move is to just not worry about it, but don't do anything that you would care if anybody knew.

[ryon]

Originally Posted by Bloom_County

Just FYI
There are 14 tracking pieces of software ( cookies ) on this page.

It's not just Google

Cookies are not software. They are just tokens identifying you out of the millions on the net.

BUT, you DO have javascript software from google, quantserve, doubleclick, intellitxt, picadmedia, vibrant, facebook and probably others running on your computer right now if you are browsing this page.

I have no idea who these all are, let alone what they are doing.

[Travelnik]

I had to laugh at this, Startpage touts itself as "The World's Most Private Search Engine."

Who is it "enhanced" by?


https://startpage.com/



.

[forsailbyowner]

Duck duck go does not track your browsing history. Im with go linux. You never know what is being included with your software with microsoft. Linux doesnt require antispyware and virus protection because they dont work with linux. That is as long as you download programs from trusted repositories. The software in the repositories has been gone over and over to receive the trusted status and the software is open source so it can be examined by peer programmers and must be to be included in the trusted repositories. With windows just opening an email can open your operating system up to all kinds of intrusive crap. in linux if you ever try to open anything and it asks for your sudo password, dont do it.

[Cormorant]

Use Firefox with NoScript, Ghostery, and AdBlock Plus. Not a cure-all, but at least it throws some obstacles in the way of the data collectors.

The browser fingerprinting is one I don't have a fix for. I'm sure someone soon will create an extension that continuously modifies your browser fingerprint with a series of add-ons to make it less identifiable.

EDIT: I also have Better Privacy installed as a Firefox extension. It blocks LSO's (Local Shared Objects), or "super cookies." I don't claim to really understand it all, but I figure every layer of obfuscation can only help maintain a bit of privacy. . . .

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Delancey

If I was Big Brother I would be paying extra special attention to all of the people who have suddenly changed their online habits post data-collection-revelations. Wouldn't you? They would be the interesting ones to watch.

Hmm, maybe if I was Big Brother I might 'leak' some information just to see what happens. Mmmwhawwahahaha!

Joking aside, one of the many interesting revelations from Snowden's leaks was that intense scrutiny is paid to individuals using encrypted email.

This is also really horrifying. There is actually nothing in my email which would be all that interesting to the authorities -- since I am a law-abiding person. So that means that I will avoid using encrypted email to avoid this intense scrutiny. Which means that I have no right to any real privacy, just because I am a law-abiding person and don't want to be treated like a criminal. Which means that the whole system is set up so that if you want any privacy, it must mean that you have something to hide. This is actually evil.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

This is also really horrifying. There is actually nothing in my email which would be all that interesting to the authorities -- since I am a law-abiding person. So that means that I will avoid using encrypted email to avoid this intense scrutiny. Which means that I have no right to any real privacy, just because I am a law-abiding person and don't want to be treated like a criminal. Which means that the whole system is set up so that if you want any privacy, it must mean that you have something to hide. This is actually evil.

Yup ... it's definitely a Brave New World .

[Cormorant]

Here's an interesting article on browser fingerprinting, with a link to Panopticlick, where you can test your broswer to see if it is uniquely identifiable. Mine is (!).

How Linux can help you protect your privacy online: Beating digital fingerprinting | News | TechRadar

And the link to Panopticlick:
https://panopticlick.eff.org

[Jerry Woodward]

+1 for Firefox. They make it very easy to use add-ons to protect privacy. The ones I use are: Do Not Track Me, FlagFox (displays the country of the server you are accessing) and WOT (Web of Trust, gives you a warning if you are trying to access a website known to be untrustworthy, ie depositing malware on your PC.

I am more concerned with identity theft and credit card theft than I am about Google or Amazon selling my data. As cruisers, I think that is much more of a concern when we use our credit card in a questionable ATM or log onto an unsecured WiFi network. Make sure you have good antivirus and anti-malware and keep it updated.

[Jerry Woodward]

By the way, Tracking is not the same as a web site installing cookies. Cookies are installed in your browser by a web site that you visit so the site remembers you. Tracking is done by third party sites that watch what you are doing. Right now, the following companies are trying to track me on CF, but are being blocked by Do Not Track Me:Google Adsense, Quantcast, Doubleclick, and Skimlinks.

[Azul]

I recently helped a friend change over to electronic health records instead of paper charts for his medical practice. Something like 70% of doctors have done this over the last few years as the government has provided a huge monetary incentive (about $40,000 for a solo practitioner over 5 years if all the standards are met yearly.)

Once you give your history to a doctor that has electronic records, the government will have access to your intimate personal health details, not just your BMI and BP. It even states in the Obamacare law that authorities can mine your records to look for "illegal" activity such as drug use.

Not to mention that most offices are using wifi to connect the examination room laptop to the server...

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Jerry Woodward

By the way, Tracking is not the same as a web site installing cookies. Cookies are installed in your browser by a web site that you visit so the site remembers you. Tracking is done by third party sites that watch what you are doing.

Yes BUT the tracking is often assisted by embedding cookies. Example: site X uses banner ad system Y. In Y's banner-launching code (embedded in the pages of site X), there's a call to Y's website which supplies info as to what page the call is from... which comes along with all the other knowable stuff like your browser, originating IP etc.... and Y will set a cookie (readable by Y) that either embeds this info or links back to a record of that info. So that Y can track you, through every site that Y has a banner (or a tracking link) on.