Is Online Privacy History? - Comments Page 1

I have heard of the browser called DuckDuckGo that supposedly doesn't sell your information or track you. What can you tell us about this browser.

Thank you for ANOTHER fabulous article. The presentation of the WebRTCI leak is especially important. One issue that I did not see was the problem occurring should the VPN go down, but your connection continues, but now uncloaked. Some VPNs have a utility that terminated the connection should their service fail, others do not. Some services operate in jurisdictions that Do NOT require that records be kept and simply have no info to turn over to authorities, others state that records will be turned over only on court order. At least one site uses "mixing" technology whereby it is impossible to trace what packet went to what IP address.
A good website for VPN issues is torrentfreak.com
They regularly rate VPN on a number of criteria.

Good editorial article!!!

I have been using the Internet since Feb 1997. I joined AOL then & we all know how "private" that was, right? Since than I moved on from AOL & still didn't have any privacy. I have learned to protect myself from Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, Malware & so on. But no privacy.

Listen, I am not that concerned about my privacy. Sorry, but if you want a FREE Internet there are consequences because nothing is ever really FREE.

The Ma Bells have been selling our phone numbers to businesses since forever. Yes, even your supposed Private Line is eventually sold. This is still being done today & we all PAY for our phone numbers!

Our Smartphones are continually getting ads on them - Where is the privacy in that? I get ads on my Smartphone when I pay my FREE games & when I connect to the Internet.

As for the FCC protecting us - Please tell me when any US Government Agency has ever truly protected us? In truth a US Government Agency is nothing more than a bureaucracy, full of rules & regulations that make the US Government more in charge of our lives than I think most of us really desire.

Freedom of Speech is only free when you don't regulate it. We see this happening in our Universities & Colleges today. These so called "Safe Places" are extremely restrictive in what you can say or not say. To me that violates the First Amendment.

I will wait to see what the FCC will do in the future. So far, I am not opposed to this action. I have ads everywhere during my entire lifetime, 73 years.

My privacy has never really been mine. I was given my Social Security card when I was 18 & applied for it. Supposedly your Social Security number is NOT to be used for identification purposes - Tell me how many places use this as identification??? The Doctor's office, your Bank, the Phone Company, your Cellphone carrier, your Utilities & on & on & on.

I barely have privacy in my own home. My cats will put their paws under my bathroom door just to get to me. My young great-grandkids will simply walk in. LOL

DuckDuckGo is not a browser but a search engine. I have used it for years and I'm happy with the results.

Spending some time with Google settings, deleting history, and more is also helpful. I found that necessary after switching to an Android phone, which requires a Google account o use effectively.

Like Bob, I find ads to be a reasonable way to support useful content; I just don't want to be tracked, as that has never resulted in accurate targeted ads. I use an anti-tracking browser extension, rather than an ad blocker.

We should, however, continue the fight for more control over data about ourselves, as it has many potentially nefarious uses.

Hello Bob
I don't really mind most targeted ads. As you say, sometimes there is free stuff available and/or alternatives to products I currently use and this is good information. What I find irritating when playing games on my iPad are 30 second long video ads for games I have already bought, or for types of games (e.g.slots) which I never play. I wouldn't at all mind if they tailored this to me by checking out what I actually do. As for the Government---well just assume they already know all about you. I'm too old to be paranoid, just cynical!

@Linda --- DuckDuckGo is an excellent search engine like Google, Bing & so on. It is not a browser.

What I do love about DuckDuckGo is there are no ads & you basically have all of the sites for what you want to research or read about. Yes, your privacy is taken in to consideration because there are NO ads.

"late days of the Obama administration. ...
To be clear: those new FCC privacy rules never went into effect. Your ISP is free to sell your browsing history, and always has been. "
That was a scam to make it look like there was action.

To quote another internet blogger "99 percent of us are just not that interesting"

Here is a probable scenario: our online surfing and searches; along with the social media sites we frequent and the video streams we watch are stored, filtered, and sold to employers, insurance companies, retailers, banks and online lending (currently estimated at 10%), and anyone else who wants the information. This will directly affect your income and expenses (such as insurance rates.)

Our children and grandchildren might be prevented from jobs, insurance, colleges, loans, ect. because of their surfing habits.

//Monitor those kids!//

In the meantime, this is estimated to give ISP's an extra $35 - 60 billion a year in revenue; not to mention the hackers. Hackread.com says it all: security is a myth.

There's gold in that information!

Bob, In addition to WebRTC leaking IPs, the DNS can leak as well. DNS leaks can be checked at http://dnsleak.com/. Another good security check site is https://ipleak.net/

To quote another internet blogger "99 percent of us are just not that interesting"

---

So why does the Gov. spend so much time and money tracking and recording all of our online activities?

"Not THAT interesting" isn't the same as "Not interesting at all"

Google "create your own vpn" if you want true privacy.

Remember that an ad blocker blocks poisoned ads as well as the "good" ones. I'm an IT guy for a 3-campus private school; the last 4 infections we had ALL came from poisoned advertising - and now we run an ad blocker. EVERYWHERE. (Same as I have long done at home.) Until website owners and legitimate advertisers develop a way to prevent drive-by / infected ads, the blocker stays in place.

Sorry, internet, but until you clean up your act I can't trust your "economic support" system.

I use Ixquick. It does the same thing as duckduck. I never use google for a search on my phone or at home.
Bottom line, I think, is you can't assume privacy anywhere. Just varying degrees of collection. I have Tor and may try that for a while. F the man is my motto.

Another highly informative article.
I understand your opposition to ad blockers, however, I find them truly indispensable.
It would be fine if ads merely trickled through here and there, but sadly, we are getting a tsunami of ads. Many are animated and too distracting to read the text on the web page they share.
As well, they make pages so slow to load.
This ad tsunami will eventually ruin the internet, if it hasn't already.

Good article, Bob! But I have to disagree with you about ad blockers. As a blind guy with some residual sight, I do not want my screen cluttered with ads; as Al has said, a "tsunami" of ads just makes reading my screen more difficult for me. And if I were to use a screen reader (JAWS, Window Eyes, System Access, etc.), it would read the entire screen; I'd be unable to skip the ads. Hence Adblock is my friend.

The above sounds rather hypocritical, considering I used to teach marketing! If I were still teaching, I wonder how I'd address the issue to an introductory marketing class...

Yet, when Manning, Assange and Snowden did to the government, what the government does to us, it's a totally different story.

@Dick; if you use firefox or opera as your browser try the Reader View extension. It installs a clickable icon in the browser address bar. When clicked on it opens a web page showing only the pertinent text or pictures. And opens the page zoomed. Click it again to view the page normally. Prob'ly works with chrome browser too.

The problem was being addressed by Obama, as well as net neutrality. Now Trump will set us back 20 years, at least. Still think there was no difference between the candidates? If you didn't vote for Hillary, you lost your right to complain.

A good search engine is startpage.com that send searches through google. The also have another sesrch site called ixquick.com. there are a lot of tricks including hacks to stop WebRTC at http://www.privacyrools.io.

I remember the old days with those dang banner ads that scrolled across your browser as you tried to read your mail. Yes I have Adblock Plus and have been using it for years. Websites like yours Bob I unblock because the ads here don't interfere with my reading your articles. There was one site I really liked and I turned off Adblock Plus and all kinds of moving ads and videos came up and actually caused my browser to hang; I don't go there anymore. This is the reason ad blockers were created... when sites became too greedy and placed a whole lot of ads on their pages. It's their own fault, not the user. I whitelisted your site and many others, but some I continue to block.

The way i see it: If companies are allowed to sell our information then we should be receiving a royalty amount for each transaction. If they use my information then I should be paid for it. Better yet outlaw lobbyist so that government will have to listen to the consumer for a change.