[ale] hire a ghost to protect your privacy for free

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed Jun 22 09:55:12 EDT 2011


Cool plugin!  Thanks for the info. I've been doing the regular cookie purge
and have been thinking about bit flipping cookie data for non whitelisted
sources. Bad data is far worse than no data.
On Jun 22, 2011 9:08 AM, "Ron Frazier" <atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com>
wrote:
> I just learned about a neat browser plugin that monitors and blocks web
> sites, web bugs, and cookies which track and invade your privacy. It
> has a database of over 500 items and growing. It's called Ghostery, and
> I've installed it on all my browsers. I also run noscript all the time,
> and only trust and allow scripts on the sites I trust. Speaking of
> which, I should go cull that white list. However, some for some sites,
> like Best Buy, I have to allow scripting for the site to work properly.
> This way, I can still reduce the amount of tracking they do on me to a
> minimum. It optionally pops up a message when you visit a site and
> tells you how many tracking things it found / blocked. It's quite an
> eye opener. Some sites have MANY trackers built into them, all of which
> feed into massive online databases about your activities and habits.
>
> Check out http://www.ghostery.com/ .
>
> The plugin can be added from the Firefox add-ons menu. It's available
> for Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. I don't know how to
> install the ones other than Firefox.
>
> The options settings I use from the initial setup screen are as
> follows. (More options are available from the toolbar icon.)
>
> - GhostRank - ON - Anonymously collects data about the web objects
> the plugin finds. Helps grow the tracker bad guy database.
> - Show alert bubble - ON - Displays a small popup for a few seconds
> on each web page which shows which trackers were found and optionally
> blocked.
> - Enable ghost count - ON - Shows how many trackers were found and
> optionally blocked
> - Delete Flash and Silverlight cookies on exit - OFF - (Advanced
> options screen) This was the default in my installation. I have Better
> Privacy installed to deal with Flash cookies. I don't know about
> Silverlight cookies. Some Flash cookies (like Pandora), I allow to stay
> there.
> - Enable bug list auto update - ON
> - Block Web Bugs - ON - All items in database selected to be blocked.
> - Block (tracking) Cookies - ON - All items in database selected to
> be blocked. (I have my Firefox settings to accept 1st party cookies,
> reject 3rd party cookies, and clear them when exiting. This is better,
> since it reduces tracking between times you shut the browser down, which
> may be days or weeks for me.)
>
> Steve Gibson did a neat Security Now podcast about this topic, at the
> link below.
>
> http://www.twit.tv/sn305
>
> Thought you guys might find this interesting.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
>
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT c3energy.com
>
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