'Do Not Track,' the Privacy Tool Used By Millions of People, Doesn't Do Anything

[DamianTV]

https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/10/...nt-do-anything

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo:

When you go into the privacy settings on your browser, there's a little option there to turn on the "Do Not Track" function, which will send an invisible request on your behalf to all the websites you visit telling them not to track you. A reasonable person might think that enabling it will stop a porn site from keeping track of what she watches, or keep Facebook from collecting the addresses of all the places she visits on the internet, or prevent third-party trackers she's never heard of from following her from site to site. According to a recent survey by Forrester Research, a quarter of American adults use "Do Not Track" to protect their privacy. (Our own stats at Gizmodo Media Group show that 9% of visitors have it turned on.) We've got bad news for those millions of privacy-minded people, though: "Do Not Track" is like spray-on sunscreen, a product that makes you feel safe while doing little to actually protect you.

Yahoo and Twitter initially said they would respect it, only to later abandon it. The most popular sites on the internet, from Google and Facebook to Pornhub and xHamster, never honored it in the first place. Facebook says that while it doesn't respect DNT, it does "provide multiple ways for people to control how we use their data for advertising." (That is of course only true so far as it goes, as there's some data about themselves users can't access.) From the department of irony, Google's Chrome browser offers users the ability to turn off tracking, but Google itself doesn't honor the request, a fact Google added to its support page some time in the last year. [...] "It is, in many respects, a failed experiment," said Jonathan Mayer, an assistant computer science professor at Princeton University. "There's a question of whether it's time to declare failure, move on, and withdraw the feature from web browsers." That's a big deal coming from Mayer: He spent four years of his life helping to bring Do Not Track into existence in the first place.

Only a handful of sites actually respect the request -- the most prominent of which are Pinterest and Medium (Pinterest won't use offsite data to target ads to a visitor who's elected not to be tracked, while Medium won't send their data to third parties.)

Illusion of Privacy, just like voting is the Illusion of Choice, as is buying a different brand, and Big Govt is the Illusion of Security. Societal Illusions. If you want to truly be safe, you have to do it yourself. Corporations that run this country do not give a $#@! about you, except what they can take from you.

[timosman]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=6683901

Never enable "Do not track". Block cookies and javascript instead.

[Bern]

What is Privacy Badger?

Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser, it's like you suddenly disappeared.

How is Privacy Badger different from Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery, and other blocking extensions?

Privacy Badger was born out of our desire to be able to recommend a single extension that would automatically analyze and block any tracker or ad that violated the principle of user consent; which could function well without any settings, knowledge, or configuration by the user; which is produced by an organization that is unambiguously working for its users rather than for advertisers; and which uses algorithmic methods to decide what is and isn't tracking. Although we like Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery and similar products, none of them are exactly what we were looking for. In our testing, all of them required some custom configuration to block non-consensual trackers. Several of these extensions have business models that we weren't entirely comfortable with. And EFF hopes that by developing rigorous algorithmic and policy methods for detecting and preventing non-consensual tracking, we'll produce a codebase that could in fact be adopted by those other extensions, or by mainstream browsers, to give users maximal control over who does and doesn't get to know what they do online.

How does Privacy Badger work?

When you view a webpage, that page will often be made up of content from many different sources. (For example, a news webpage might load the actual article from the news company, ads from an ad company, and the comments section from a different company that's been contracted out to provide that service.) Privacy Badger keeps track of all of this. If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you. Voila!
...

More: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq

Free and available for Firefox and Chrome. EFF does good work.

[DamianTV]

Theres about a BILLION things that you have to do in order to take responsibility for your own privacy.

#1 - You CAN NOT trust these companies with your data, PERIOD.
#2 - Stop using Google Chrome. Everything you do goes back to Google.
#3 - Stop signing in to use ANY Google Services
#4 - Block all Cookies by DEFAULT and ONLY allow Cookies for sites you log into.
#5 - DONT fall into temptation of singing up for anything because its FREE. NOTHING is free.
#6 - DO start looking at other ways you are tracked, such as DOM Storage, Flash Cookies, and Canvas Fingerprinting
#7 - DO start using other technologies such as VPNs, HOSTS files, UBlock Origin, NoScript or variants
#8 - DO start LEARNING about which plugins are no longer useful, such as AdBlock, which sold out
#9 - DO test your configs to see if you are Trackable so you can balance privacy and functionality
#10 - DO ask for help, especially on the specifics of how to configure complex plugins. They dont all work out of the box. You NEED to do some work to make sure they are effective at truly protecting your Privacy

Due to the constant exchange of information between Advertisers, Marketers, Governments, Trackers, Tech Giants, Employers, Insurers, Schools, and various other groups which utilize data collected on you, be fully aware that the web has mutated into effectively one giant constantly evolving Psychological Profiling Test that knows more about you than you know about yourself. These organizations do NOT have YOUR best interests in mind. They collect YOUR data for THEIR interests. They do not even know the extent of the damage that they are doing to the people. They are setting you up for catastrophic failure. The real goal is to deform you from a human into a consumer.

They only feed you as much as you think you need and can afford, and its ALL POISON for your mind. They do NOT care about the severe damage they do to you by exploiting your Psych Profile to coercively feed you information in such a way that it reshapes the way you think, manufactures desires for the next great thing, causes your depression without the next greatest thing, distracts you from the real things in your life that should have real meaning, and all so they can make a buck at your expense. Youre not just buying a TV show or a sweater on Amazon, youre selling out Human Lives to become Disposable Debt Slaves and not just paying with what little money you have, youre trading the Keys to your Deep Mind on how to be controlled and exploited and fully enslaved. And should you finally awaken enough to see the prison for what it is, you will be not only disposed of, but silenced should you speak, cut off from support structures in your life (which is one major part of literal Brainwashing), and taught only to blame yourself for their wretched deeds that are leading to the systematic destruction of Freedom and Liberty. THAT is what you are trading when you have no qualms about surrendering the privacy of both yourself and others by validating them. If you EVER try to organize with others and mount a resistance against them, their manipulation of the Laws will leave you in shackles for eternity. You may not even be able to recognize your chains for what they are.

The Mandatory Elimination of Privacy is EVERY Tyrants wet dream as the True Purpose of constant surveillance on every aspect of your life is ABSOLUTE Population Control. This is NOT 1984, this is NOT Brave New World. This dystopia is far far worse. This IS Brave New 1984 on Super Steroids. You wont be sent to a Reeducation Camp because you are ALREADY in one. You are already told what to think constantly by the MSM and Social Media and Employers and Insurance Companies and Money Manipulators and Churches. Ask yourself whats the difference between what you THINK a Reeducation Camp would look like a hundred years ago and what one would look like today? Do you imagine a Reeducation Camp would be a prison with bars that has a classroom full of childlike adults and one governing adult representing a figure of authority that scolds you for individual thought and brainwashes you? What if you simply removed the bars from the prison, and repeated the same message to you over and over again in your own home? The major difference between the Prison Keepers in the imagined Reindoctrination Facility and the one that is reality is that those who have become the Jailers do not even know they ARE the Jailers. Perhaps you are also taking on the role and responsibility of repeating the Propaganda to others? Are YOU the Jailer of others?

Do you think if you were to even show someone else the Prison they would even believe you? Or would they immediately express their Pavlovian trained response and follow their trained FIXED Habits of Reaction to Authority and choose to be enslaved? Why? Because learning you are a Prisoner and seeing the Truth of the Prison is simply too hard for most people. Most that are challenged with this simple idea are flat out Addicted to the Propaganda and the pretty lies. They are Addicted to the measures of control they exert. They know how to exploit the Human Mind, and that is something you will NEVER find on Google, no matter how much you search for it. You will NEVER be told by the Tyrants or Technocrats the truth. The Truth that you ARE A SLAVE, and by giving up your Privacy, you are giving them the KEYS to your MIND which should be yours and yours alone, and only shared with those you explicitly trust, your true friends, your Natural Groups you form yourself. You hold your own KEYS. Its time for you to lock your doors against those who are NOT your friends.

Protecting your Privacy is protecting your MIND.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/10/...nt-do-anything



Illusion of Privacy, just like voting is the Illusion of Choice, as is buying a different brand, and Big Govt is the Illusion of Security. Societal Illusions. If you want to truly be safe, you have to do it yourself. Corporations that run this country do not give a $#@! about you, except what they can take from you.

Sounds like a class action lawsuit just waiting to be filed...

[DamianTV]

Sounds like a class action lawsuit just waiting to be filed...

I dont think it will happen. It would be no different than trying to sue the Federal Government for not allowing the people to vote on the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank, or even its existence. Its a lawsuit that will be quite literally laughed out of court. If voting made any meaningful change, it would be illegal. Just as it pretty much is illegal to try to assert any authority over Govt that they do not expressly let you. The policies and structures in place are there to maintain the Illusion of a Republic as it casts zero meaningful change but makes people feel like they do.