No Adament Disagreement, just some practical advice
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| TxtEdMacs Jul 22, 2019 11:12 AM EDT |
Avoid Facebook and its leaching partners entirely, if you can. Otherwise use Mozilla's Multi-Account Containers to make third party tracking even more difficult for those perpetrators. Put Facebook and its other clustered applications into a single container, isolated from all other sites you might visit. I would suggest further that more critical sites be limited, e.g. banking / investments / charge cards / shopping have individually named associated containers. Moreover, the default setting should be that these sites only be opened in these containers. For even more protection, consider using the bookmarks to store these sites. The latter will allow one to close the container completely clearing all data and later allow opening in only the named container when the site is selected off the bookmark listing. I also separate news sites into individual containers and while some may be named on the bookmark listing I do not close them due to my viewing most every day and perhaps multiple times. Lazy? Maybe, but I care less about being tracked on my news reading than financial activity. As always, your buddy, TxtEdMacs |
| seatex Jul 22, 2019 12:20 PM EDT |
Good advice! If using Firefox, at a bare minimum, I advise the following basic preferences for Privacy & Security: Content Blocking - Strict Always send "Do Not Track" signal, even though it's not always honored. Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed. Do not auto-fill addresses. I personally block new requests asking to use my location, camera and microphone. Disable Firefox data collection. |
| gus3 Jul 22, 2019 10:29 PM EDT |
And include "facebook" as a pattern for blocking all cookies. Big question: does Firefox now block tracking by all Facebook-owned domains? Bigger question: what other big domains now have their tracking blocked in Firefox? |
| TxtEdMacs Jul 23, 2019 10:41 AM EDT |
My Dear August Gus III, Hey slow down, slow down please. Ok? By default Firefox allows any and all cookies. Containers just isolate cookies from other silos where one cannot see the cookies used by the other, but you could have almost anything in either. Now if you want to limit cookies in Firefox you go to Preferences and there select Privacy & Security. Slide down to Cookies and Site Data, where you can delete all of the above on closing Firefox. However, if you desire a finer tuning one is given several options. The first allows two sets of clearing data: "Clearing Cookies and Site Data" and "Cached Web Content", but these are just check boxes that give current status and must be selected and manually executed to actually clear the selected item(s). Otherwise, just view the information and cancel. The next option is Manage Cookie and Site Data, which displays an array of: site names, number of cookies, storage used and last used (interval). The gross option is to remove all, but again requires manual execution. It is also possible to remove individual sites with the option that those selected will be excluded in the future. The better option for some sites would be in the next Firefox setting. Manage Permissions ... allows considerable fine tuning of what you will allow individual sites to do in your browser. In this area you can completely block the site from downloading any data, allow only for the session or allow. The problem might be that one must know the exact site address that is being blocked. So perhaps a subsite might be missed and due to the Firefox default be allowed to do as it wished. Regarding you questions as to what actions Firefox takes against Facebook and its associated entities I must admit utter ignorance. However, from experience I suspect Mozilla took very little action other than creation of a Facebook container that the user had to select and add all sites that were known to that user as Facebook owned or tethered and then configure correctly. That is the way the Multi-Account Containers works. Also by inference, with the aspirational release of Facebook's intentions to become a digital currency powerhouse entity names entirely new to me seem to be closely associated in the former's most cherished endeavors. Whether owned or not financially they are well withing Facebook's orbit, hence, should not be considered independent of the low ethical standards of its owner, parent and / or associate is prone to exhibit. How could Mozilla keep up? Just not feasible. We are on our own, so isolate even seemingly innocuous sites. You will never know when they could become Facebook or other Internet Monsters buddies. As always your buddy, TxtEdMacs |
| TxtEdMacs Jul 23, 2019 11:06 AM EDT |
Seatex Let me guess, you used to sit a lot but now you only stand. No. Too obvious, just give me some time. Regarding the author's suggestions of Firefox addons, I think I have all mentioned plus the Privacy Badger. Furthermore, my default search is set to DuckDuckGo along with some Privacy Essentials it offered. I suspect you are unaware of a "Do Not Call" registry maintained by the U.S. government that was supposed to block telemarketing calls. I never registered, due to my suspicion that the sleaze balls behind telemarketing would not respect it. I was right. Do not track, is a request that is routinely ignored, so I do not supply any further information by setting an open "request" not to be tracked. Why help them with potentially good data? As always your buddy, TxtEdMacs |
| seatex Jul 23, 2019 8:25 PM EDT |
TxtEdMacs - What is this supposed to mean? Let me guess, you used to sit a lot but now you only stand. No. Too obvious, just give me some time. |
| TxtEdMacs Jul 23, 2019 8:56 PM EDT |
Simple: trying to guess the inner meaning of your code name. |
| seatex Jul 23, 2019 9:01 PM EDT |
oooooooooooooooh. There is no real meaning behind it. I'm a life-long native Texan. It's just a combo of my initials and "tex". |
| TxtEdMacs Jul 24, 2019 10:05 AM EDT |
Had you varied the case, I would have guessed Texas Seafarer. That is not too much of a stretch with the Gulf Coast and Houston Harbor, but so off base. My own code name was based on a fallacy, due to my not understanding the difference between xEmacs and GNU's Emacs at the time I was using both on Unix and Linux, respectively. When I became more enlightened it was too late to correct my error, however, my view of RMS became considerably more negative. |
| flufferbeer Aug 02, 2019 3:53 PM EDT |
@seatex >> If using Firefox, at a bare minimum, I advise the following basic preferences for Privacy & Security: >> Content Blocking - Strict Always send "Do Not Track" signal, even though it's not always honored. Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed. Do not auto-fill addresses. I personally block new requests asking to use my location, camera and microphone. Disable Firefox data collection. FYI related to better security in FF, DistroWatch also has a writeup on The Firejail security sandbox at https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20160222#tips in which the "firejail firefox" command sets up a sandbox and launches Firefox. |
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