Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
I know this thread is a few weeks old but it is still highly related. I found this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/what-actually-changed-google%27s-privacy-policy Maybe it ain't so bad after all. Someone posted it wasn't tho. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Jan 27, 2012 11:18 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: 8 snippage BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others combined... Somewhat anecdotal, and definitely veering way off-topic, but Baidu was the reason why my company decided to change our webhosting company: Its spidering brought our previous webhosting to its knees... Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Jan 27, 2012 11:18 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: 8 snippage BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others combined... Somewhat anecdotal, and definitely veering way off-topic, but Baidu was the reason why my company decided to change our webhosting company: Its spidering brought our previous webhosting to its knees... Rgds, I wonder if Baidu crawler honors the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt? Or I wonder if Baidu cralwer IPs need to be covered by firewall tarpit rules. ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Jan 27, 2012 11:18 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: 8 snippage BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others combined... Somewhat anecdotal, and definitely veering way off-topic, but Baidu was the reason why my company decided to change our webhosting company: Its spidering brought our previous webhosting to its knees... Rgds, I wonder if Baidu crawler honors the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt? Or I wonder if Baidu cralwer IPs need to be covered by firewall tarpit rules. ;) I don't remember if it respects Crawl-Delay, but it respects forbidden paths, etc. I've never been DDOS'd by Baidu crawlers, but I did get DDOS'd by Yahoo a number of times. Turned out the solution was to disallow access to expensive-to-render pages. If you're using MediaWiki with prettified URLs, this works great: User-agent: * Allow: /mw/images/ Allow: /mw/skins/ Allow: /mw/title.png Disallow: /w/ Disallow: /mw/ Disallow: /wiki/Special: -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Feb 8, 2012 10:57 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Jan 27, 2012 11:18 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: 8 snippage BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others combined... Somewhat anecdotal, and definitely veering way off-topic, but Baidu was the reason why my company decided to change our webhosting company: Its spidering brought our previous webhosting to its knees... Rgds, I wonder if Baidu crawler honors the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt? Or I wonder if Baidu cralwer IPs need to be covered by firewall tarpit rules. ;) I don't remember if it respects Crawl-Delay, but it respects forbidden paths, etc. I've never been DDOS'd by Baidu crawlers, but I did get DDOS'd by Yahoo a number of times. Turned out the solution was to disallow access to expensive-to-render pages. If you're using MediaWiki with prettified URLs, this works great: User-agent: * Allow: /mw/images/ Allow: /mw/skins/ Allow: /mw/title.png Disallow: /w/ Disallow: /mw/ Disallow: /wiki/Special: *slaps forehead* Now why didn't I think of that before?! Thanks for reminding me! Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Feb 8, 2012 10:57 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Jan 27, 2012 11:18 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: 8 snippage BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others combined... Somewhat anecdotal, and definitely veering way off-topic, but Baidu was the reason why my company decided to change our webhosting company: Its spidering brought our previous webhosting to its knees... Rgds, I wonder if Baidu crawler honors the Crawl-delay directive in robots.txt? Or I wonder if Baidu cralwer IPs need to be covered by firewall tarpit rules. ;) I don't remember if it respects Crawl-Delay, but it respects forbidden paths, etc. I've never been DDOS'd by Baidu crawlers, but I did get DDOS'd by Yahoo a number of times. Turned out the solution was to disallow access to expensive-to-render pages. If you're using MediaWiki with prettified URLs, this works great: User-agent: * Allow: /mw/images/ Allow: /mw/skins/ Allow: /mw/title.png Disallow: /w/ Disallow: /mw/ Disallow: /wiki/Special: *slaps forehead* Now why didn't I think of that before?! Thanks for reminding me! I didn't think of it until I watched the logs live and saw it crawling through page histories during one of the events. MediaWiki stores page histories as a series of diffs from the current version, so it has to assemble old versions by reverse-applying the diffs of all the made to the page between the current version and the version you're asking for. if you have a bot retrieve ten versions of a page that has ten revisions, that's 210 reverse diff operations. Grabbing all versions of a page with 20 revisions would result in over 1500 reverse diffs. My 'hello world' page has over five hundred revisions. So the page history crawling was pretty quickly obvious... -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Feb 9, 2012 1:35 AM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:
On Feb 8, 2012 10:57 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Paul Hartman
paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:55 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info
wrote:
On Jan 27, 2012 11:18 PM, Paul Hartman
paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com
wrote:
8 snippage
BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others
combined...
Somewhat anecdotal, and definitely veering way off-topic, but Baidu
was
the
reason why my company decided to change our webhosting company: Its
spidering brought our previous webhosting to its knees...
Rgds,
I wonder if Baidu crawler honors the Crawl-delay directive in
robots.txt?
Or I wonder if Baidu cralwer IPs need to be covered by firewall
tarpit
rules. ;)
I don't remember if it respects Crawl-Delay, but it respects forbidden
paths, etc. I've never been DDOS'd by Baidu crawlers, but I did get
DDOS'd by Yahoo a number of times. Turned out the solution was to
disallow access to expensive-to-render pages. If you're using
MediaWiki with prettified URLs, this works great:
User-agent: *
Allow: /mw/images/
Allow: /mw/skins/
Allow: /mw/title.png
Disallow: /w/
Disallow: /mw/
Disallow: /wiki/Special:
*slaps forehead*
Now why didn't I think of that before?!
Thanks for reminding me!
I didn't think of it until I watched the logs live and saw it crawling
through page histories during one of the events. MediaWiki stores page
histories as a series of diffs from the current version, so it has to
assemble old versions by reverse-applying the diffs of all the made to
the page between the current version and the version you're asking
for. if you have a bot retrieve ten versions of a page that has ten
revisions, that's 210 reverse diff operations. Grabbing all versions
of a page with 20 revisions would result in over 1500 reverse diffs.
My 'hello world' page has over five hundred revisions.
So the page history crawling was pretty quickly obvious...
Although my website is not a wiki, I can already guess which part of the
site brought the server to its knees...
My company's research division everyday selects important economic and
financial news to be republished in the corporate website. We have news
from 3-4 years ago. To make visitors easier to find any news, the website
designer provided a nice calendar interface.
The problems:
- The calendar interface is dynamically generated; days without interesting
news have no hyperlinks, only days with news have hyperlinks.
- Every page in the website has a sidebar that provides a summary of the
stock market for the day (5-minute delay). The sidebar is pre-generated
by server-side PHP, before being handed over to the AJAX framework.
- Someone had a flash of 'brilliance' to do a URL rewrite, thus hiding the
telltale '?' query indicator, thus misleading spiders (they probably
thought that the hundreds of news pages are static pages that got magically
updated by unicorns every 10-20 seconds)
I'm going to disallow spidering fit the news pages. I'm almost certain that
this will result in a much lighter load on the poor webserver.
Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Hi, have you read googles privacy changes yourself? I just did - and there is nothing new or unusual.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: Hi, have you read googles privacy changes yourself? I just did - and there is nothing new or unusual. I read some more on it but I'm thinking about what will be coming next. It seems when a company goes public like Google did a while back, facebook is about too, they go downhill a bit privacy wise and it is like rolling down a hill. It takes a while but it happens. Thing about me having fastmail or something, it is me voting with my money, not me leaving with no vote against someone else's money. Right now, google is only worried about the money from ads which is something I can't control. If fastmail tries this, when I leave it is my money they lose. Fastmail will think about me not some ad that may or may not be coming. Since I will be a paying customer, I won't have any ads anyway. I am looking into Yandex too. Are they Russian or something? I'm kind of leaning towards them for a couple reasons but trying to figure them out. I'm trying to do this slow and with a deeper knowledge this time so I don't have to go through this again later on. Plus, I just don't like being tracked all over the place anyway. We have a big enough brother already. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Sunday 29 Jan 2012 19:12:17 Dale wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: Hi, have you read googles privacy changes yourself? I just did - and there is nothing new or unusual. I read some more on it but I'm thinking about what will be coming next. It seems when a company goes public like Google did a while back, facebook is about too, they go downhill a bit privacy wise and it is like rolling down a hill. It takes a while but it happens. Thing about me having fastmail or something, it is me voting with my money, not me leaving with no vote against someone else's money. Right now, google is only worried about the money from ads which is something I can't control. If fastmail tries this, when I leave it is my money they lose. Fastmail will think about me not some ad that may or may not be coming. Since I will be a paying customer, I won't have any ads anyway. I am looking into Yandex too. Are they Russian or something? I'm kind of leaning towards them for a couple reasons but trying to figure them out. I'm trying to do this slow and with a deeper knowledge this time so I don't have to go through this again later on. Plus, I just don't like being tracked all over the place anyway. We have a big enough brother already. As far as I can tell all that is changing with Google is they are going to join up in terms of user authentication, hitherto separate portals or apps they had. I do not see a material difference to what is there now. Fastmail, Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, et al, are all public ISPs and are making their money one way or another. It is in their benefit to respect users privacy, but don't for a minute think that your info while in their systems can be deemed as private. Unless you use encryption they can probe it, analyse it, read it, categorise it, etc. Whether it is Google ads bureau, or CIA, or FSB, there is not much of a difference between them as far as the privacy of your data is concerned. I think that you are worrying yourself unnecessarily, although there is no harm in being cautious all the same. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On 1/29/2012 02:47 PM, Mick wrote: On Sunday 29 Jan 2012 19:12:17 Dale wrote: As far as I can tell all that is changing with Google is they are going to join up in terms of user authentication, hitherto separate portals or apps they had. I do not see a material difference to what is there now. Fastmail, Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, et al, are all public ISPs and are making their money one way or another. It is in their benefit to respect users privacy, but don't for a minute think that your info while in their systems can be deemed as private. Unless you use encryption they can probe it, analyse it, read it, categorise it, etc. Whether it is Google ads bureau, or CIA, or FSB, there is not much of a difference between them as far as the privacy of your data is concerned. I think that you are worrying yourself unnecessarily, although there is no harm in being cautious all the same. In the age of the corporate Internet, it is wise to understand that information is a commodity that is bought and sold and that anything that goes through you ISP and public providers (like Yahoo, Google, etc.) is available for sale, with the exceptions of bank account numbers and the like. In short, it is wise to assume that there is no reasonable assumption of privacy for any of your activity on the Internet. Using encryption is a good policy, especially if you use the Internet to buy and sell things - otherwise your credit card numbers, bank accounts, and so on, can be compromised. However, one should also read the terms of use and terms of service for all services they use. For example, it violates the Yahoo terms of use to use proxy servers or networks (e.g. Tor) to obscure one's location and IP address. Governments, as you bring up, also monitor Internet traffic, though they are mainly looking for what they deem as threats to their security. I agree that there is no harm in being cautious. Chris -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJPJdz/AAoJEFHj8CHvnA9YulkP/3CPtJncbOkCueYhXM9W8ieq Pn2pwrrCo8l4ctqstlnRxpG96Q3ju/oInW3RijB3GBDJjhZMZPXfmxZMLYNF76J+ nN3eyNEmos/GYTE2dY/8Ywzu+hoJoQBk/mzsH+aumPTc3JTSkxGLOZtA1Y0pdLd7 cZff2I8PgMrAI6ejQ7/Ot/Bt/YUDlQtPwzlYxhCxjfS4VV9E3a4gz5kt1/MVMO0Y 7EcaIppoUoXBgUbr+rtZX1db4KaVgiiOs9FROL8LJNMdW5vhWx4UA1MKORRzjBpl 6ByPbFjs8c08uO761WcmeFo5Ija7mdR+DzGyDDj0CC2zQ94drWPhREszahTULmED 4UJpGmFk/ZHk6rgZZOAIxsEGaJ0Fi6MeVa5HzZvhD2X6dGdatQTuGYJn4z6vn9iT NKjoz9LmI97XoUo4FJ8/rASeVk0n7WyrzlbJV6MMM+QVd7qUaU62T3/XZwO3xEWp LKHFh3T8BYzqmMRgWsurXp1v1/crWaKnB5TC8jeCeRhuo8e7ox+tmjgDp0hoifGc FdlfwXNWep+DYdX1g3X9xV92Z8g2moWwDLGEeiDFkA/kMr28cJCbR5lFLXGPmChH T1r4nPl6PbV6g3UxdBnkzJ5OSeudiSpkLLmNGkrra+Olz4qWi6yNKjmkHWMdn3HT qT+BglTRdVTKKsIxnt1J =qB49 -END PGP SIGNATURE- --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 120129-1, 01/29/2012 Tested on: 1/29/2012 6:57:54 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2012 AVAST Software. http://www.avast.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:38:15 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote: To turn this on its head ... rather than hiding, is there a way to create identical browsers that pollute their (google et al.) databases? Considering the huge number a people using the likes of Google (and no one has stated that they actually use something like this), such pollution wouldn't even amount to one speck of dust. -- Neil Bothwick What is a free gift ? Aren't all gifts free? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Friday 27 Jan 2012 00:48:14 Peter Humphrey wrote: On Thursday 26 January 2012 21:29:05 Alan McKinnon wrote: I've been contacted, and interviewed by phone, by Google TWICE. Both times the person said straight up they read gentoo-users shrug I was contacted too, but I think they were swayed by my sig. Anyway, no further contact once I told them a bit about myself. Don't take it personally. On counter-interviewing the interviewer I came to the conclusion that she was looking for young IT literate candidates with networking and security knowledge, who would be keen to work for Google at a (relatively) low salary. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:21:16 +, Mick wrote: Don't take it personally. On counter-interviewing the interviewer I came to the conclusion that she was looking for young IT literate candidates with networking and security knowledge, who would be keen to work for Google at a (relatively) low salary. I don't think anyone could think Alan or I was young. From Alan's posts on here, I would employ him in anything but a department of one! My contact was interested in someone with experience in high performance clusters. Can anyone point to a post of mine, here or anywhere else, that implies that my knowledge of clustering extends beyond being able to spell it? -- Neil Bothwick Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Friday 27 Jan 2012 12:31:50 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:21:16 +, Mick wrote: Don't take it personally. On counter-interviewing the interviewer I came to the conclusion that she was looking for young IT literate candidates with networking and security knowledge, who would be keen to work for Google at a (relatively) low salary. I don't think anyone could think Alan or I was young. From Alan's posts on here, I would employ him in anything but a department of one! My contact was interested in someone with experience in high performance clusters. Can anyone point to a post of mine, here or anywhere else, that implies that my knowledge of clustering extends beyond being able to spell it? You're attributing intelligence and thoroughness in researching for suitable candidates, which I have not as yet found in recruitment agents, or even many high level head hunters. They just cast a wide net and see what sticks to it. Ask them an off script question and they are lost at sea. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:59:34 +, Mick wrote: My contact was interested in someone with experience in high performance clusters. Can anyone point to a post of mine, here or anywhere else, that implies that my knowledge of clustering extends beyond being able to spell it? You're attributing intelligence and thoroughness in researching for suitable candidates, which I have not as yet found in recruitment agents, or even many high level head hunters. Oh yes, I used to work with recruitment agents and they did send me some dross... but only once! However, this was a Google employee. The irony of this is that a thread about how much Google want to know about us has descended into a demonstration of how little they know, even from publicly available information. -- Neil Bothwick I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:31:50 + Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:21:16 +, Mick wrote: Don't take it personally. On counter-interviewing the interviewer I came to the conclusion that she was looking for young IT literate candidates with networking and security knowledge, who would be keen to work for Google at a (relatively) low salary. I don't think anyone could think Alan or I was young. From Alan's posts on here, I would employ him in anything but a department of one! I take Groucho Marx's lead in this and refuse to take a position with any company that is prepared to have me on the premises! Yup, that is a paradox. My contact was interested in someone with experience in high performance clusters. Can anyone point to a post of mine, here or anywhere else, that implies that my knowledge of clustering extends beyond being able to spell it? -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Hello! On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:16:01 -0600 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Thoughts? Suggestions? What about Yandex? It provides a search tool and a mail box with POP3 and IMAP protocols support free of charge. And by the way, they say that the mailbox size is also indefinite (well, at least theoretically :) ). Regards, Vladimir - v...@ukr.net
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 1:41 AM, Graham Murray gra...@gmurray.org.uk wrote: James Broadhead jamesbroadh...@gmail.com writes: I wouldn't find it at all surprising if gentoo systems came out pretty unique; no standard set of fonts, for example. So maybe if you change your fonts regularly it might not be able to track you - thinking that you are actually multiple different people. Honestly, I think anyone who wants to go to that extent is living their own personal fantasy. But, if you want to do something like that, modify your browser to add random salts to your font list, plugin list and User-Agent string, and access the Internet using a Tor proxy. Be sure to disable any extensions, plugins or builtins that allow the browser to access your wifi or gps data. Xulrunner, for example, has wifi awareness specifically for geo-targeting purposes. Google's interest is in tightly-defined demographics to aid in advertising and low-level details like is he more likely to click on an acaiberry ad or an ad selling SATA port multipliers with statistical monitoring? The whole thing about having a 'real name' is about forcing people to be up-front with their identities when interacting with other people online, which they think makes people more civil. (Which I don't believe it does, but I only note that so people don't mistake me for a flat-out Google apologist.) -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 8:48 AM, v...@ukr.net wrote: Hello! On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:16:01 -0600 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Thoughts? Suggestions? What about Yandex? It provides a search tool and a mail box with POP3 and IMAP protocols support free of charge. And by the way, they say that the mailbox size is also indefinite (well, at least theoretically :) ). I'll add a vote of support for Yandex. It usually has good results, though it really depends on what you are searching for. I did some test queries asking random linux questions and the link containing the solution was usually higher in the list on Yandex when compared to Google. Comparing local shopping prices in the US, use Google instead... Based on my web server logs, the bots which check the most often are: 1. Baidu 2. MJ12 3. Gootkit auto-rooter 4. Bing 5. Yandex 6. Yobao 7. Google 8. ZmEu 3 and 8 are bots trying exploits, 2 is not a search engine, 1 and 6 are not available in English, 4 is Microsoft, and 7 is excluded for the present conversation. So, Yandex seems a good choice. In fact, the only remaining choice. :) BTW, the Baidu spider hits my site more than all of the others combined...
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Am 27.01.2012 07:57, schrieb Dale: Dale wrote: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. [...] OK. This has gotten a LOT of replies with lots of interesting info. I have another question along the same lines. What about using a VPN? I been messing with tor and Firefox but if I try to watch a video or something that has any length to it, it gets rather iffy. I found this: www.vpn4all.com I don't think it works with Linux but it was interesting to read about just for the information. From my understanding, people can't read your traffic and they can't tell anything about you as far as location. I know google can do this because when I type in certain things, it all comes up for local stuff. If I do the same in Firefox with tor turned on, it gets rather weird. Stuff from Africa was showing up one time and later on it looked like German stuff. When I checked my IP and did a whois, it was in other countries. What are thoughts on this sort of thing? Anything better than tor out there? Am I getting paranoid or do people really watch us and collect data on us? :/ Dale :-) :-) Well, to summarize it: It solves the following problems: - Your ISP cannot snoop or manipulate your traffic (useful for mobile connections which normally compress images, for example) - Your IP no longer maps directly to you - IP geolocation no longer works reliably It does not solve this problem: - Your browser+cookies still identify you It creates this new problem: - The VPN provider sees all your traffic and your IP (in this regard it is worse than Tor because with Tor, the endpoint sees your traffic and the start point your IP but neither sees both) Regards, Florian Philipp signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, January 26, 2012 8:16 am, Dale wrote: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale, I don't use them myself, but Fastmail might be an option for you. http://www.fastmail.fm They're also very good with giving back to the OS community. -- Joost
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com writes: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale :-) :-) Long URL just in case the shorty above doesn't work. It may be broken tho. Copy and paste alert. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b For an alternative search engine you should have a look at DuckDuckGo I've used it in the past and it has a pretty impressive set of features. As for e-mail I've heard good things about FastMail. Hushmail used to be a good one but I'm not sure how they stand today. -- t: https://www.twitter.com/mikankun b: http://mikankun.wordpress.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 01:16:01AM -0600, Dale wrote I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Years ago, when facing yet another ISP move, I got my own personal domain. I have the option of pointing my MX record at various services. I'm currently using Cotse for inbound email. For outbound email I use my broadband ISP. If it's down, I use a dialup ISP, which I keep as an emergency backup.. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 08:48:28 Michael Mathurin wrote: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com writes: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale :-) :-) Long URL just in case the shorty above doesn't work. It may be broken tho. Copy and paste alert. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers -across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpis rc=al_comboNE_b For an alternative search engine you should have a look at DuckDuckGo I've used it in the past and it has a pretty impressive set of features. As for e-mail I've heard good things about FastMail. Hushmail used to be a good one but I'm not sure how they stand today. I've used Fastmail for years and is a very reliable email provider. It does not have the storage allowance of Gmail on its free account, so space will run out unless you start deleting messages. Also, unless you pay you are only allowed to access messages via webmail and IMAP4, not POP3. There are options for webmail scrapers or archiving of messages via mail clients, but Fastmail is not Google in terms of access options and features. BTW, it seems to me that if you access youtube and at the same time search Google without being logged in to any of their portals, they will not be tracking your email for user profiling purposes. They may be logging IP addresses but it could be different users on the same IP address, so advertising results would not be relevant. Delete flash and normal cookies, do not log in to any Google sites and you should be as good with their tracking of your habits as you always were. To search in relative anonymity you could of course use tor if you can put up with their slow connections, or perhaps visit Scroogle who also offer an SSL page in case you want to avoid anyone sniffing your packets. Scroogle looks like ixquick except that they only serve Google search results. At busy times Google blocks Scroogle access, so it may be getting too popular for its own good. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:07:51 +, Mick wrote: BTW, it seems to me that if you access youtube and at the same time search Google without being logged in to any of their portals, they will not be tracking your email for user profiling purposes. They may be logging IP addresses but it could be different users on the same IP address, so advertising results would not be relevant. They can track a lot more than IP addresses, your browser can provide a lot of information, not just user-agent but installed fonts, plugin information and much more. There is enough to do a damn good job of identifying you even when your IP address changes. It is certainly simple to see if you are one user or two. -- Neil Bothwick Nymphomania-- an illness you hear about but never encounter. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 01/26/2012 08:16 AM, Dale wrote: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale :-) :-) Long URL just in case the shorty above doesn't work. It may be broken tho. Copy and paste alert. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b Hi Dale, I used ixquick for a while, but then I switched to www.ecosia.org and I think you could like it. Timo - -- PGP-Key: 0x1629EE0B (http://xenolabs.net/pubkey.asc) Key fingerprint: AC8D 516C 3DF3 9978 4F5D A3DE 5279 72DD 1629 EE0B -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPIUjPAAoJELmObhH3xcWzNaUIAMgyxZ82+qsO/sK/oa/BTuzF I1XHIV2BJLehlqcektzn0+6KmuD7kfuu9gRS+NwIjikH4LJnjaen0wKO+awZ+j5s +4hXtcfr1pgiSGAHrrThEqBl/JQxsSpzXAS8kliM3eQDpqE3PbFz51YcaCzmWDR1 A7EVvFMNxoLBbGzpjJB+DjCer1Vh1MZ9aZ0fJXMw5QNGfdaFq1NjF1HmA/RM8XXM o1MbFywqH99gxFWU3tLZfUOlAm6xtAyzN1CUMkhvkoc4IHH6rmK0dylVhCQe5nnM NkFSNUH+awv2lQee44GRXMhF8chiDTiKMfRh0HeGJOYT1P33cMg/0xFVLhCwFOY= =kZBq -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 11:33:14 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:07:51 +, Mick wrote: BTW, it seems to me that if you access youtube and at the same time search Google without being logged in to any of their portals, they will not be tracking your email for user profiling purposes. They may be logging IP addresses but it could be different users on the same IP address, so advertising results would not be relevant. They can track a lot more than IP addresses, your browser can provide a lot of information, not just user-agent but installed fonts, plugin information and much more. There is enough to do a damn good job of identifying you even when your IP address changes. It is certainly simple to see if you are one user or two. Not necessarily without making some broad assumptions. For example two different users could be using the same machine and OS and browser; or same user could be using same machine, but different browser; or different users using different machines with same OS browser, etc. So extrapolating the user profile from browser headers is unreliable. Of course Google may only be interested in getting right most of the time in which case they may use such info - although I have not found any references that they actually do. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Dale - I've been using Fastmail since 2005. Absolutely no issues at all. I do pay for the enhanced account. Good luck festus On Thu, Jan 26, 2012, at 01:16 AM, Dale wrote: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale :-) :-) Long URL just in case the shorty above doesn't work. It may be broken tho. Copy and paste alert. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:56:49 +, Mick wrote: They can track a lot more than IP addresses, your browser can provide a lot of information, not just user-agent but installed fonts, plugin information and much more. There is enough to do a damn good job of identifying you even when your IP address changes. It is certainly simple to see if you are one user or two. Not necessarily without making some broad assumptions. For example two different users could be using the same machine and OS and browser; or same user could be using same machine, but different browser; or different users using different machines with same OS browser, etc. There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. Of course, two people using the same browser on the same computer as the same user would be indistinguishable, which is as good a reason as any to not let anyone else use your browser. So extrapolating the user profile from browser headers is unreliable. Of course Google may only be interested in getting right most of the time in which case they may use such info - although I have not found any references that they actually do. Agreed on both, I was only saying that it can be done, not that it is. Not that Google's profiling of individual's information is that hot anyway. Last year they approached me about a job for which I am completely unqualified - and not just because it meant getting out of bed before 9am :-O -- Neil Bothwick Men who have playful kittens shouldn't sleep in the nude. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
John J. Foster wrote: Dale - I've been using Fastmail since 2005. Absolutely no issues at all. I do pay for the enhanced account. Good luck festus Do they allow encrypted messages too? I looked at the help pages and I'm pretty sure it does. Thanks. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Michael Hampicke gentoo-u...@hadt.biz wrote: There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 13:50:46 Neil Bothwick wrote: Not that Google's profiling of individual's information is that hot anyway. Last year they approached me about a job for which I am completely unqualified - and not just because it meant getting out of bed before 9am :-O Ha, ha! A very nice lady approached me too (admitted to having harvested my address from the Gentoo M/L) but run away when I told her that the only way I would share my CV details with Google would be via a person to person meeting in their London offices and the amount of income I would expect for a job there. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Michael Mol wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Michael Hampicke gentoo-u...@hadt.biz wrote: There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:16 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Michael Mol wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Michael Hampicke gentoo-u...@hadt.biz wrote: There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. It looks like the biggest culprits appear to be the available font list and the browser plugin set. Stick to as close-to-core a set of fonts as possible, and that'll likely help. Also disable any plugins you don't need. (FWIW, using the incognito window reduced the number of bits listed in both Browser Plugin Details and system Fonts, and reduced the visible volume of data for Browser Plugin Details by about a third.) -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:12:43 +, Mick wrote: Not that Google's profiling of individual's information is that hot anyway. Last year they approached me about a job for which I am completely unqualified - and not just because it meant getting out of bed before 9am :-O Ha, ha! A very nice lady approached me too (admitted to having harvested my address from the Gentoo M/L) but run away when I told her that the only way I would share my CV details with Google would be via a person to person meeting in their London offices and the amount of income I would expect for a job there. My first reaction was, why would Google need a CV from me, surely they already know more about me than my mother does? Clearly they don't. At first I thought it was some type of scam, but several checks confirmed that it was a valid approach and I ended up speaking to them by phone, at a time that put them in California. -- Neil Bothwick Use Colgate toothpaste or end up with teeth like a Ferengi. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:05:25 +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote: There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ That's the one, I'll try to remember to make a note of the URL this time. -- Neil Bothwick Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning I can't configure Slackware. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012, at 07:59 AM, Dale wrote: John J. Foster wrote: Dale - I've been using Fastmail since 2005. Absolutely no issues at all. I do pay for the enhanced account. Good luck festus Do they allow encrypted messages too? I looked at the help pages and I'm pretty sure it does. Thanks. Dale Have sent any for quite some time (2-3 years), but it should work just fine. http://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_security.html
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:05:25 +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote: There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ That's the one, I'll try to remember to make a note of the URL this time. Mnemonic: It's a reference to the Panopticon, which was a model of prison designed to make inmates behave by being aware that they were constantly being watched. Derives from 'pan' (all) 'opti' (sight/seeing). So, pan-opti-click becomes all seeing click. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012, at 08:22 AM, John J. Foster wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012, at 07:59 AM, Dale wrote: John J. Foster wrote: Dale - I've been using Fastmail since 2005. Absolutely no issues at all. I do pay for the enhanced account. Good luck festus Do they allow encrypted messages too? I looked at the help pages and I'm pretty sure it does. Thanks. Dale Have sent any for quite some time (2-3 years), but it should work just fine. http://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_security.html uh, happy fingers - I meant haven't sent any
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:34:56AM -0500, Michael Mol wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. I get almost the same numbers with just using NoScript and Flashblock. (And the above result when I allow the Java applet and JavaScript). This backs me up in using noscript and flashblock. Sometimes I doubt myself when I get asked once more why I would use NoScript in times when most of the web relies on JS. I then say that privacy and comfort is more important to me than having to allow JS on a site from time to time. (Even though some sites obviously don't work without it, such as video portals, most of them still do, albeit some gt a borked layout from it). -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla' I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services. The power of water is so great, that even the strongest man cannot hold it. pgpB9TJj2ZpI7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 07:59:57AM -0600, Dale wrote: John J. Foster wrote: Dale - I've been using Fastmail since 2005. Absolutely no issues at all. I do pay for the enhanced account. Good luck festus Do they allow encrypted messages too? I looked at the help pages and I'm pretty sure it does. What's encrypted mail to a service provider anyway? Just a bunch of text that only humans can't decipher. If they would disallow it, they'd have to look at the mails' content (like google does for ads) in order to recognise them. This would disqualify them as a trustworthy provider in the first place. -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla' I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services. Everything has its two sides. But a quadrangle has three. pgpMOGmMjdmaW.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. Within our dataset of visitors, one in 0 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys INF bits of identifying information. I think I broke it. I win? :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:34:56AM -0500, Michael Mol wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. I get almost the same numbers with just using NoScript and Flashblock. (And the above result when I allow the Java applet and JavaScript). This backs me up in using noscript and flashblock. Sometimes I doubt myself when I get asked once more why I would use NoScript in times when most of the web relies on JS. I then say that privacy and comfort is more important to me than having to allow JS on a site from time to time. (Even though some sites obviously don't work without it, such as video portals, most of them still do, albeit some gt a borked layout from it). FWIW, I'm not using NoScript or Flashblock, only an Adblock. And Chrome blocked the Java applet both in the normal and incognito modes. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. Within our dataset of visitors, one in 0 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys INF bits of identifying information. I think I broke it. I win? :) Who knows? You may have only broken you way of seeing the results. ^^ -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Within our dataset of visitors, one in 0 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys INF bits of identifying information. I think I broke it. I win? :) Sweet, panopticlick.eff.org got gentoo'd :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 16:04:45 Frank Steinmetzger wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:34:56AM -0500, Michael Mol wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. I get almost the same numbers with just using NoScript and Flashblock. (And the above result when I allow the Java applet and JavaScript). This backs me up in using noscript and flashblock. Sometimes I doubt myself when I get asked once more why I would use NoScript in times when most of the web relies on JS. I then say that privacy and comfort is more important to me than having to allow JS on a site from time to time. (Even though some sites obviously don't work without it, such as video portals, most of them still do, albeit some gt a borked layout from it). I get better results with Opera (with everything other than Cookies enabled): only one in 215,475 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 17.72 bits of identifying information. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On 26 January 2012 16:18, Michael Hampicke gentoo-u...@hadt.biz wrote: Within our dataset of visitors, one in 0 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys INF bits of identifying information. I think I broke it. I win? :) Sweet, panopticlick.eff.org got gentoo'd :) I wouldn't find it at all surprising if gentoo systems came out pretty unique; no standard set of fonts, for example.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 1:16 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. To be honest, I already assumed they were doing this tracking all along... I think Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook etc. will track you everywhere you go, too, if they can. The credit card companies have been doing this for years. Buy a lot of dog food at the grocery store with your Visa card? Get Alpo junk mail in your mailbox... Me, I use Chromium for using social media sites or Google services that I want to log-in to. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I don't use it for anything else. I use Firefox for everything else. I am not logged into any of those services in Firefox. I use RequestPolicy to block all third-party content unless I explicitly allow it. I also use noscript, adblock, flashblock, cookie monster. Everything is blocked by default except same-site images. My Firefox is like the armored tank of web browsing: big and slow and sometimes it crashes, but I feel safe inside it. :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Me, I use Chromium for using social media sites or Google services that I want to log-in to. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I don't use it for anything else. I use Firefox for everything else. I am not logged into any of those services in Firefox. I use RequestPolicy to block all third-party content unless I explicitly allow it. I also use noscript, adblock, flashblock, cookie monster. Everything is blocked by default except same-site images. My Firefox is like the armored tank of web browsing: big and slow and sometimes it crashes, but I feel safe inside it. :) I have a setup similar to this. I use chromium on my main user for gmail and other services that I often use and I want to stay logged in. Main difference is that I have another user just for browsing everything else. I used to have simply another firefox profile on my main user, but recently I decided to set a completely different user for what *I'd like to be* safe browsing. On this user I use Firefox with NoScript, Flashblock, AdBlocker, plus it is set up to be in incognito mode by default. The Flash cache is disabled also. With this user I do not login in any site. I'm sick of all these policies about tracking users and this constant siege to privacy. For this very reason I don't have a facebook profile. I used to trust Google, but in recent years has become increasingly intrusive. Maybe slightly OT, but what do gentoo-users think about Tor? Lorenzo -- Nothing is interesting if you're not interested.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 17:11:39 Lorenzo Bandieri wrote: Me, I use Chromium for using social media sites or Google services that I want to log-in to. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I don't use it for anything else. I use Firefox for everything else. I am not logged into any of those services in Firefox. I use RequestPolicy to block all third-party content unless I explicitly allow it. I also use noscript, adblock, flashblock, cookie monster. Everything is blocked by default except same-site images. My Firefox is like the armored tank of web browsing: big and slow and sometimes it crashes, but I feel safe inside it. :) I have a setup similar to this. I use chromium on my main user for gmail and other services that I often use and I want to stay logged in. Main difference is that I have another user just for browsing everything else. I used to have simply another firefox profile on my main user, but recently I decided to set a completely different user for what *I'd like to be* safe browsing. On this user I use Firefox with NoScript, Flashblock, AdBlocker, plus it is set up to be in incognito mode by default. The Flash cache is disabled also. With this user I do not login in any site. I'm sick of all these policies about tracking users and this constant siege to privacy. For this very reason I don't have a facebook profile. I used to trust Google, but in recent years has become increasingly intrusive. Maybe slightly OT, but what do gentoo-users think about Tor? It's alright for hiding your IP address, BUT anyone can set up a Tor server and harvest unencrypted info that flies across the wire. It's OK if you are connecting to https websites though. You'll also need some secure DNS server if you don't want the addresses you're visiting to show up (at least at your ISP's DNS repeater). The other problem I found is that over the years it has become extremely slow. I don't know if it is being flooded by kiddies using bittorrents. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Lorenzo Bandieri lorenzo.bandi...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe slightly OT, but what do gentoo-users think about Tor? As an anonymising proxy, in my opinion, I consider it to be the most hostile network one could ever use. I would only use Tor from within a virtual machine that contains no other data. Ensure you are not passing logins, cookies, credit card numbers, anything useful to bad guys is of utmost importance. I would encrypt everything prior to sending, if possible. Validate SSL fingerprints first off-network to avoid MITM attacks. If you're looking at it from the standpoint of hidden services, with good end-to-end security maybe it would be a little safer than using it to browse the open internet... I think something like Freenet, in concept, would be even more secure since it is decentralized, does not touch the open WWW at all, and nobody has to host content on a server, but in practice the bandwidth requirements are insane, and the moral ambiguity of hosting content that is not yours and could be objectionable. The terabytes of UDP traffic every month will probably draw unwanted attention to you, too... Of course, people where the government is more of a threat than Tor hackers/poisonous nodes might be willing to live with those risks. BTW, on my servers, I receive a lot of exploit attempts from Tor exit nodes. This could also give plausible deniability to black hats: Oh, I didn't do this illegal stuff, I was running as a Tor exit node, it could have been anyone!
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Am 26.01.2012 11:07, schrieb Mick: On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 08:48:28 Michael Mathurin wrote: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com writes: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale :-) :-) Long URL just in case the shorty above doesn't work. It may be broken tho. Copy and paste alert. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers -across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpis rc=al_comboNE_b For an alternative search engine you should have a look at DuckDuckGo I've used it in the past and it has a pretty impressive set of features. As for e-mail I've heard good things about FastMail. Hushmail used to be a good one but I'm not sure how they stand today. I've used Fastmail for years and is a very reliable email provider. It does not have the storage allowance of Gmail on its free account, so space will run out unless you start deleting messages. Also, unless you pay you are only allowed to access messages via webmail and IMAP4, not POP3. There are options for webmail scrapers or archiving of messages via mail clients, but Fastmail is not Google in terms of access options and features. +1 for Fastmail. I guess the add free service for 5 bucks per year would be sufficient for Dale as he doesn't need much online space when he uses POP3, anyway. BTW, it seems to me that if you access youtube and at the same time search Google without being logged in to any of their portals, they will not be tracking your email for user profiling purposes. They may be logging IP addresses but it could be different users on the same IP address, so advertising results would not be relevant. Delete flash and normal cookies, do not log in to any Google sites and you should be as good with their tracking of your habits as you always were. This made me thinking: Does anyone out there use different browsers for different services? Like using Chrome only for GMail, Youtube and G+, Opera for Facebook and Firefox for normal browsing? I guess you could achieve the same using different user profiles. For example `firefox --no-remote -P google` and `firefox --no-remote -P default`. Regards, Florian Philipp signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
RE: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
From: Frank Steinmetzger [mailto:war...@gmx.de] Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 11:05 AM This backs me up in using noscript and flashblock. Sometimes I doubt myself when I get asked once more why I would use NoScript in times when most of the web relies on JS. I then say that privacy and comfort is more important to me than having to allow JS on a site from time to time. Of course, by using NoScript and FlashBlock when most people no longer do so, you are making yourself *more* unique and *more* trackable by Google's standards. :) --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 18:09:16 Florian Philipp wrote: This made me thinking: Does anyone out there use different browsers for different services? Like using Chrome only for GMail, Youtube and G+, Opera for Facebook and Firefox for normal browsing? Yes, I use Chromium --incognito to check some financial websites, Firefox with private browsing to do my banking and log in to work remotely (Citrix SSL VPN) and Opera for very much everything else because of its speed and configurability (although these days most browsers have caught up with Opera in most respects). I guess you could achieve the same using different user profiles. For example `firefox --no-remote -P google` and `firefox --no-remote -P default`. Ha! I didn't know that FF can handle different profiles! I better read on this now. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 18:09:16 Florian Philipp wrote: This made me thinking: Does anyone out there use different browsers for different services? Like using Chrome only for GMail, Youtube and G+, Opera for Facebook and Firefox for normal browsing? Yes, I use Chromium --incognito to check some financial websites, Firefox with private browsing to do my banking and log in to work remotely (Citrix SSL VPN) and Opera for very much everything else because of its speed and configurability (although these days most browsers have caught up with Opera in most respects). I guess you could achieve the same using different user profiles. For example `firefox --no-remote -P google` and `firefox --no-remote -P default`. Ha! I didn't know that FF can handle different profiles! I better read on this now. Pretty much all of the Xulrunner apps can do this. So Firefox, sunbird, thunderbird, seamonkey... -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 18:09:16 Florian Philipp wrote: This made me thinking: Does anyone out there use different browsers for different services? Like using Chrome only for GMail, Youtube and G+, Opera for Facebook and Firefox for normal browsing? Yes, I use Chromium --incognito to check some financial websites, Firefox with private browsing to do my banking and log in to work remotely (Citrix SSL VPN) and Opera for very much everything else because of its speed and configurability (although these days most browsers have caught up with Opera in most respects). I guess you could achieve the same using different user profiles. For example `firefox --no-remote -P google` and `firefox --no-remote -P default`. Ha! I didn't know that FF can handle different profiles! I better read on this now. Pretty much all of the Xulrunner apps can do this. So Firefox, sunbird, thunderbird, seamonkey... And have been able to for at least a decade, back to the Netscape Navigator days, I think... at least Netscape Communicator for sure had it, since roaming profiles was its big feature.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 12:16, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Michael Mol wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Michael Hampicke gentoo-u...@hadt.biz wrote: There is actually a huge amount of information available, giving a high level of pseudo-uniqueness. There was a web site that showed you how much it could glean from even an anonymous session, but I can't remember where is was. Somewhere like the EFF. I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Use Stallman's way [1] Seriously, I am not concerned with Google's policy change, it affects absolutely nothing on my online life. I keep using their services cause I find them the best to use, I would change otherwise. Its the same reason I run Windows on my HTPC, and Linux at work and my netbook, efficiency. If you worry too much, you end up insane. [1] http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html -- Daniel da Veiga
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:52:47 -0500, Michael Mol wrote: I guess you could achieve the same using different user profiles. For example `firefox --no-remote -P google` and `firefox --no-remote -P default`. Ha! I didn't know that FF can handle different profiles! I better read on this now. Pretty much all of the Xulrunner apps can do this. So Firefox, sunbird, thunderbird, seamonkey... Chromium can do it too, with --user-data-dir=DIR -- Neil Bothwick IBM: I Blame Microsoft signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:12:39 + Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:12:43 +, Mick wrote: Not that Google's profiling of individual's information is that hot anyway. Last year they approached me about a job for which I am completely unqualified - and not just because it meant getting out of bed before 9am :-O Ha, ha! A very nice lady approached me too (admitted to having harvested my address from the Gentoo M/L) but run away when I told her that the only way I would share my CV details with Google would be via a person to person meeting in their London offices and the amount of income I would expect for a job there. My first reaction was, why would Google need a CV from me, surely they already know more about me than my mother does? Clearly they don't. At first I thought it was some type of scam, but several checks confirmed that it was a valid approach and I ended up speaking to them by phone, at a time that put them in California. I've been contacted, and interviewed by phone, by Google TWICE. Both times the person said straight up they read gentoo-users shrug Turns out this list and local LUGs are by far the best way to find good Linux talent. You can't hide where you are really at anymore after posting here for a few months -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
My first reaction was, why would Google need a CV from me, surely they already know more about me than my mother does? Clearly they don't. Of course they do! They just wanted you to confirm what they know about you. Who knows, maybe you lied when you posted a story on facebook where you told people that you once fought 15 terrorists from Mars - on a bus that would explode when going slower than 50mph - while saving a little girls life by performing open heart surgery with a steak knife and a paper clip...
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:47:18 +0100, Michael Hampicke wrote: My first reaction was, why would Google need a CV from me, surely they already know more about me than my mother does? Clearly they don't. Of course they do! They just wanted you to confirm what they know about you. Who knows, maybe you lied when you posted a story on facebook where you told people that you once fought 15 terrorists from Mars - on a bus that would explode when going slower than 50mph - while saving a little girls life by performing open heart surgery with a steak knife and a paper clip... Sorry, you lost me when you got to facebook... -- Neil Bothwick How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Frank Steinmetzger wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 07:59:57AM -0600, Dale wrote: John J. Foster wrote: Dale - I've been using Fastmail since 2005. Absolutely no issues at all. I do pay for the enhanced account. Good luck festus Do they allow encrypted messages too? I looked at the help pages and I'm pretty sure it does. What's encrypted mail to a service provider anyway? Just a bunch of text that only humans can't decipher. If they would disallow it, they'd have to look at the mails' content (like google does for ads) in order to recognise them. This would disqualify them as a trustworthy provider in the first place. Well, I didn't think there was a difference but I wanted to make certain since I just set up PGP and all that stuff. I didn't want to have to change again later on if it didn't either. Now I know. I'm reading all the other replies still. Sort of tied up a bit. Patience. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, 2012-01-26 at 11:14 -0500, Michael Mol wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:34:56AM -0500, Michael Mol wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. I get almost the same numbers with just using NoScript and Flashblock. (And the above result when I allow the Java applet and JavaScript). This backs me up in using noscript and flashblock. Sometimes I doubt myself when I get asked once more why I would use NoScript in times when most of the web relies on JS. I then say that privacy and comfort is more important to me than having to allow JS on a site from time to time. (Even though some sites obviously don't work without it, such as video portals, most of them still do, albeit some gt a borked layout from it). FWIW, I'm not using NoScript or Flashblock, only an Adblock. And Chrome blocked the Java applet both in the normal and incognito modes. To turn this on its head ... rather than hiding, is there a way to create identical browsers that pollute their (google et al.) databases? Perhaps a read only VM with a standard fit out? (noscript etc. - basically a sandboxed browser for the paranoid!) or does such a thing already exist? BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thursday 26 January 2012 21:29:05 Alan McKinnon wrote: I've been contacted, and interviewed by phone, by Google TWICE. Both times the person said straight up they read gentoo-users shrug I was contacted too, but I think they were swayed by my sig. Anyway, no further contact once I told them a bit about myself. -- Rgds Peter Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 7:38 PM, William Kenworthy bi...@iinet.net.au wrote: On Thu, 2012-01-26 at 11:14 -0500, Michael Mol wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:34:56AM -0500, Michael Mol wrote: I guess you mean https://panopticlick.eff.org/ My results from work: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,939,102 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.89 bits of identifying information. Funny, I get exactly the same thing except add one to the large number. I guess you tested before I did. How does one avoid this but still have sites work? Well, I just went to the same site using a Chrome 'incognito' browser, and got this: Within our dataset of several million visitors, only one in 969,560 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 19.89 bits of identifying information. I get almost the same numbers with just using NoScript and Flashblock. (And the above result when I allow the Java applet and JavaScript). This backs me up in using noscript and flashblock. Sometimes I doubt myself when I get asked once more why I would use NoScript in times when most of the web relies on JS. I then say that privacy and comfort is more important to me than having to allow JS on a site from time to time. (Even though some sites obviously don't work without it, such as video portals, most of them still do, albeit some gt a borked layout from it). FWIW, I'm not using NoScript or Flashblock, only an Adblock. And Chrome blocked the Java applet both in the normal and incognito modes. To turn this on its head ... rather than hiding, is there a way to create identical browsers that pollute their (google et al.) databases? Perhaps a read only VM with a standard fit out? (noscript etc. - basically a sandboxed browser for the paranoid!) or does such a thing already exist? Sure. Boot an Ubuntu live CD and use the browser in there. And forget all the fancy plugins. For how panopticlick works, their presence will say more about you then their absence. Your target needs to be having as simple, generic a setup as possible. Disabling features which come enabled by default sets you apart. Adding fonts to the system, or adding plugins to the browser, or enabling extensions, or having an unusual operating platform show up in your User-Agent--all of it. Every customization you make makes you more unique. It's much the same as dressing the same as everyone else outside; it's called keeping a low profile. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
James Broadhead jamesbroadh...@gmail.com writes: I wouldn't find it at all surprising if gentoo systems came out pretty unique; no standard set of fonts, for example. So maybe if you change your fonts regularly it might not be able to track you - thinking that you are actually multiple different people.
Re: [gentoo-user] Google privacy changes
Dale wrote: Hi list, I ran across this news item about Google: http://alturl.com/s7xi5 The long URL is below. I'm sort of getting to where I don't like Google since they seem to be doing things that I'm just not comfy with. Next they will want a camera on my rig so they can watch me surf. I found a search engine that may work. It is here: www.ixquick.com Does anyone have a better search tool? I don't like Yahoo either. I do like froogle so that would be a bonus. You know, shopping tool. Now to my next issue. I'm thinking about switching emails too. Yea, everyone on here knows my addy but I bet most can recognize my posts anyway. Plus, if the init thingy goes south, well, it happens. Anyway, what is a nice stable email account server that allows pop access, Seamonkey as the email program, that is not tracking everything or nosey as heck? Free would be nice but I would pay something inexpensive on a yearly basis if it is really good. I think Yahoo has this but ain't they sort of like Google already? Plus, I'm not sure how much longer Yahoo is going to last or make similar changes itself. I'm sort of getting tired of switching emails every time I switch ISPs or there is a policy change. That is why I switched to gmail in the first place. No matter what ISP I use, I can still use Gmail. Yet, here I am again. Thoughts? Suggestions? Dale :-) :-) Long URL just in case the shorty above doesn't work. It may be broken tho. Copy and paste alert. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b OK. This has gotten a LOT of replies with lots of interesting info. I have another question along the same lines. What about using a VPN? I been messing with tor and Firefox but if I try to watch a video or something that has any length to it, it gets rather iffy. I found this: www.vpn4all.com I don't think it works with Linux but it was interesting to read about just for the information. From my understanding, people can't read your traffic and they can't tell anything about you as far as location. I know google can do this because when I type in certain things, it all comes up for local stuff. If I do the same in Firefox with tor turned on, it gets rather weird. Stuff from Africa was showing up one time and later on it looked like German stuff. When I checked my IP and did a whois, it was in other countries. What are thoughts on this sort of thing? Anything better than tor out there? Am I getting paranoid or do people really watch us and collect data on us? :/ Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words! Miss the compile output? Hint: EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n
