Want to know who really monitors your internet activity?

You can also use Ad-blocker for Firefox. Of course it won't block the tracking but you can have the option of blocking adverts on websites.

reply to post by FarBeyondDriven69


Well on ATS you aren't really being "watched". Well, no that's not true, somebody is definitely watching you, or reading you I should say.

We use Quantcast. Harmless.

~Keeper

reply to post by tothetenthpower


and the rest

google analytics www.ghostery.com...
gorilla nation www.ghostery.com...
quantcast www.ghostery.com...
double click (On some pages it seems) www.ghostery.com...

And to add to that list we have

comscore beacon www.ghostery.com...
google adsense www.ghostery.com...

on the homepage

www.theabovenetwork.com...
I want to see This

Download A PDF Media Kit for complete and printable overview of our advertising products and rate card.
Click here to download the PDF media kit.

Just let people donate instead of "forcing" them to be a part of marketing bull.

reply to post by anon102


Using add-blocker is against the Terms & Conditions.

Ads are the primary revenue source for ATS and such, is the reason this great place exists without the need for monthly memberships. Please do not use them when browsing ATS. I have ad-block, but I have ATS accepted.

~Keeper

I have to agree on Firefox, its an excellent browser with some superb add ons.
I switched to LinuxMint just to get away from Microsoft and after (a lot) of reading and searching online I have sorted a few things which are important to me including Moblock which is the Linux equiv of PeerGuardian, Im astounded at the number of ip's that are trying to get to my PC, something in the region of 2 million when I start surfing.
I also use Tor Proxy (not at the same time) which is ace, and well worth the hours of torture trying to set it up.
Anyone have any other suggestions as i'm always looking to make it harder to get to me.......why make it easy for them ?

reply to post by KingAMARU


The way tor is setup is pretty sketchy, be careful.

Avoid Google, but if you want to tap into Google's massive search index, use this: Scroogle Scraper (Scroogle.org). Google searches without the tracking and cookies.

You can also avoid some of the tracking by deleting your flash (LSO) cookies, the easiest way to do that is use Firefox and the add-on "BetterPrivacy", you can view and delete those persistent flash cookies individually (but don't delete them all or you will lose your playlists and saved flash game stats).

Geolocation is another Web browser feature that allows advertisers to target you with local shopping and businesses, if it creeps you out that search results or ads contain mostly local businesses then you can turn that feature off.

Advertisers also look to monitor their customers social media presence;

12 Social Media Monitoring Tools Reviewed

The follow blog posts, how many facebook followers you have, etc.

Personally I don't think most of this advertising tracking is anything nefarious, although it can be at times annoying. There are ways to avoid it and remove the means by which they track you. (look at FF add-ons like NoScript, AdBlock Plus, BetterPrivacy, Force-TLS, UserAgentSwitcher, and a slew of proxy tools, etc.)

I'm more concerned about who might aggregate all this data and start to match it to real life names and addresses. The DHS has already been shown to track our social media opinions;

New FOIA Documents Reveal DHS Social Media Monitoring During Obama Inauguration

Another telling document from the DHS:

Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative (DHS.gov)

States that the DHS can create user accounts to log into social media sites, blogs, forums, message boards, etc. to collect information on users and opinions, it tracks the media site itself as well as the users on such sites.

You also still have the "old" government tracking tools;
Echelon
Einstein
FBI "super warrants"
Carnivore
Magic Lantern

The scary part is most of these tools are over 10 years old, they've had plenty of time to perfect them and create a second generation of tools that can do far more, all designed to collect data, aggregate it, build profiles, determine who you are, what you are, and what you may do in the future. There's no indication that those advertisers share any of their data with the federal government, but it's not like they would tell us if they do. Scary stuff, man.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Thanks for all of that info Bm!

I'm kind of on your side in thinking that there isn't much nefarious going on, but the system sure does seem like it could be open to a lot of abuse with large corporations collecting reams of data on you from every page you visit.
I note that most of them say in their privacy policies that they do not connect your identity to your data, but that seems to me to be saying that they could if they wanted to.
Interestingly if you go to the BBCNews front page theres isnt a single tracker (obviously because they don't make any of their revenue from ads)

I wonder how people would feel if they were asked to fill in a form listing their address time of purchase, interests etc every time they bought a newspaper

reply to post by davespanners


I resent how they force you to fill out all your personal information just to get warranty service in many cases, especially with computer equipment.

And don't get me started on facebook and google which are tantamount to human behavioral engineering.

Originally posted by aivlas
reply to post by KingAMARU

 

The way tor is setup is pretty sketchy, be careful.

Is that it ?, c'mon brother don't leave me hanging, I'm paranoid enough already.......care to enlighten me

reply to post by KingAMARU


Exit nodes can be watched easily and they are.

www.wired.com...

reply to post by aivlas


Cheers pal i'll check that out.

Originally posted by KingAMARU

Originally posted by aivlas
reply to post by KingAMARU

 

The way tor is setup is pretty sketchy, be careful.

Is that it ?, c'mon brother don't leave me hanging, I'm paranoid enough already.......care to enlighten me

I use Tor too, I don't know what you had to set up, I just unzipped it to a thumb drive, click the onion and I can keep my IP address secure.

The big thing with TOR is, Do not log onto any personal email accounts, that can revile who you are.

(From what I have been told) Those who run Exit node some can see a little of what your doing, if they are the last computer that receives the information before sending it to you.

Since Tor is setup to not accept Cookies and other unsecured websites it should help blocking tracking cookies.

Also it works in https://

Also don't run exit nodes!!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I might have missed it, but as for protecting your ip address from advertisers, can setting up a proxy sever help?

Since it does not matter where your connected to, your tracked, because its your computers IP address not the modem.

Would changing your MAC address help?

Well I doubt that it would be good business sense for an internet advertisement agency to make a nuisance of itself so I'm sure they're all perfectly harmless.

I can, however, understand how people would object in principle so here is the website of the governing body which polices these companies. You are given the option to opt out of their tracking hi-jinks....

www.networkadvertising.org...

I sincerely hope this isn't a flagrant breach of ATS's terms and conditions. Opting out still means that you get adverts - just not ones that are tailored specifically to your internet habits.

Its kind of humorous actually, while we innocently explore alternative viewpoints on ATS the Googlestalker tries to keep up. I followed just one link to Amazon from ATS a few months ago and now every time I visit Amazon I get.

Customers who viewed this also viewed

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Hitler's Suppressed and Still-Secret... ›Henry Stevens Paperback $19.95 $13.57
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God I hope they don't use cookie information to determine no fly lists

If you start to get heartburn just search for some Michener for a few days, it's like eating Oatmeal.

I use 'Private Browsing' should I actually brows things I don't want my wife to see, because she's just not so computer literate yet.

They who are they, that you deem the enemy of you, have ways of finding you're browsing trails, if they focus on you. Don't leave a trail of breadcrumbs then, if that is your objective. Ride an assessable proxy if you are worried about what you do. It's so easy even a caveman can do it.

reply to post by Bordon81



I used to suffer from heartburn pretty badly. I found that roasted sunflower seeds are like a miracle cure for it. I have a friend with a deuodenal ulcer, works for him as well. Keeps him off medication which destroys his liver.

OT: Yeah there's a ton of media data collection, big sites have a bunch of different ad companies which will put a tracking cookie on your computer.

The way I see it is like the bacteria in your colon, you can flush it out if you want but it's gonna come back anyway

don't care who is tracking me, I say bring it on.


I am anti establishment why would I want to hide the fact?

I'd like to thank you for bringing this to my attention i use firefox myself with an addon called no script using it i'm able to stop ads and the like from running and i've been able to tick the boxes on all the above snooping bots it might not help if searching on google but with abit of luck stop them from been able to read everything i do online i already have my firefox cleaning historys and i regularly clean my cookies away with tune up utilities one click maintainace s&f
Peace Brother

Dave, this search engine claims it collects no data and I'm wondering if you could try it out and see if thats true. Also , does it limit the snoops on sites that you find through it at all?
www.startpage.com...