Amazon utilizes several tracking methods.
* Third-Parties (including devices with Amazon Cloud, music apps, ebook
readers, etc.)
* Session Cookies
* Ever-Cookies/DOM (Most important)
* Referrer Tracking
* Click-Handling
I don't think they are tracking browser fingerprints, or if they do it
doesn't really affect the site. But it doesn't hurt to use FireGloves just
the same.
To stop what oralfloss was saying, you will need to have DOM AND session
cookies disabled. This can be achieved with Cookie-Controller addon for
aBrowser. Set it to "Force "off" state at start" and "[Off] DOM Storage".
Then try browsing Amazon and you'll find their history doesn't work.
Additionally they make heavy use of click-handlers. These are urls which
track you when they can't get you from anything else. Luckily we have another
addon for that known as "Clean Links". However by default it won't help you.
You'll need to make some adjustments that I just wipped up tonight to make it
work properly.
1) Under the Clean Link Addon Preferences "Remove From Links" Field where it
says (?:ref|aff)\w*, add these unique identifiers
(|place|pr|pf_rd_m|pf_rd_s|pf_rd_t|pf_rd_p|pf_rd_i|ld|pf_rd_r).
When your done it should like like this:
(?:ref|aff|place|pr|pf_rd_m|pf_rd_s|pf_rd_t|pf_rd_p|pf_rd_i|ld|pf_rd_r)\w*|utm_\w+|(?:merchant|programme|media)ID
(You can copy+paste the above into the Remove From Links field if in doubt)
*Note: I cannot guarentee all those extra rules won't break other sites, but
as of right now it seems OK for me and works nicely on Amazon.com
2) Uncheck Event Delegation Mode
3) Check Use Redirect Watcher
4) Wipe Out Skip Domains, the guy probably got paid off by Google,FaceBook,
Linkedin, et all. which are in that whitelist.
5) Highlight Cleaned Links.
6) Go to Amazon (get your sunglasses ready for all those yellow cleaned
links!)
Lastly, they track purchase habbits. So as soon as you login and buy they're
going to have that data and give you targeted suggestions. Some of which are
configurable your account settings but keep getting reset on each login. So
have fun with continually setting those privacy settings. Oh and they
completely ignore Mozilla's Do-Not-Track Header. ;)
