The first post was about general lines, a sort acquaintance with privacy world.
Today we will take the first steps on this path and we will start with web browser. Since some months I have decided to quit with Google Chrome. And I will tell you why. It is a privacy nightmare.
But before a step-back. We must discover another term that is fundamental to our knowledge: cookies. What is a cookie?
Cookie is a file that an internet website usually sends to you. A blanket piece sent and stored into your computer that is written with various information. The purpose is keeping track of your behavior on a website.
Did you come through Google?
What pages have you visited?
How much time did you spent on it?
What items have you bought?
What settings?
So, next time the website (or the server) is going to read the cookie file and provide you a personalized web-page according to your previous researches. Ok, a cookie is a tracker,
But cookies have some limitations:
The cookie is not infinite.
Other websites CANNOT READ a cookie.
But here is the tricky part, what happened if websites implement third-part cookies and owned by company-x and how can they convince people to implement third-part cookies? A third-part cookie is a cookie that keeps track of your behaviour. The cookie’s owner is another firm, so when you reach another website, with this particular same cookiethey already know who you are.
Long story short, Google is the most prolific cookie baker, because Google ADS are everywhere.
Also have a look on Google- My activity, you will be impressed about how much information they are able to collect. When and where we go, which websites. You can opt-out but I am sure you won’t stay all day long cleaning your cookies history.
In addition, don’t worry, there are other method to track internet researches. It is called fingerprints.
Wait what? What are fingerprints?
Quoting Wikipedia
“A device fingerprint, machine fingerprint or browser fingerprint is information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. Fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.”
Additional way to understand our behaviour.
In addition
“WebRTC is a new communication protocol that relies on JavaScript that can leak your actual IP address from behind your VPN.” On google Chrome is always ON, so you cannot get rid of this lovely feature.
Since the beginning of my journey I decided to switch from Google Chrome to Brave. I am writing on social network based on a crypto, so I am sure you know what is Brave. This browser is based on chromium so it’s fast. Really fast. That’s why I loved it . But a reddit discussion made me aware of his lack of privacy concerning the wallet managed by Uphold. Quoting directly from the guy on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/fw2i5s/the_brave_browser_wants_what/
“They callect - detailed user information through account (basically your government information + email + phone), through surveys (your interests, points of view etc), through customer care (similar to surveys, but more question oriented), your device information, identify nearby cell towers (location accuracy), identify WiFi AP's (your f**** Wifi name and more information related to that). More in-depth technical data from your hardware, browser, browsing behavior, browsing patterns - all through cookies, server logs & "other similar, but not disclosed to user technology”.
Not only but also our data are collected and stored outside Europe. Cool isn’t it? Spoiler alert not so cool. I really recommend the developing team to quit with this project and join Hive community. How would it be? Browser and social network. Amazing. You can easily turn off that shit, so don’t worry. But I doubt on the reliability of this particular browser. You claimed privacy but your partner doesn’t? Seemed a little bit weird. But at least, if you wanna sell your data for free, you must opt in and register to this service, otherwise it is not gonna work. My only concern regards the so claimed privacy and then an agreement with a non-focused-privacy company. WEIRD.
However, I checked, and brave has no trackers and a pretty reliable ad-blocker, which makes one of most (phone based) reliable in terms of privacy.
Also, here is another not so nice news about the lack of transparency of Brave: the browser automatically complete website hijacked the link you typed with their OWN binance affiliation code.
Source
https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/1269260767913795584
- cryptonator1337
For those reasons, I checked on reddit and privatetools.io (best place to discover privacy software) and I found out that Firefox is the best choice alongside ToR browser. Actually, Tor is always the best choice because it can cover your IP and it is impossible to detect you’re searching a certain word or chain of words. It is the infrastructure that hides you and it is impossible for anyone (even for developers) to detect what you have searched. Because your IP become encrypted and “pingponed” across some of their 6000 servers. Best way, especially if you want to be covered.
However, it is very very very slow.
So, I picked Firefox which was a solid balance between sell your soul to the devil and wait 5/10 second to see a webpage.
Here’s the privacy policy https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
Also, I strongly recommend the privacy tools settings, that you can find here.
https://www.privacytools.io/browsers/#addons
Hope you enjoy it, see you next time!