[liberationtech] FB-like "Twitter-connect" soon. How can we avoid all this tracking?

[Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb]

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I may have the wrong end of the stick but in my mind, a solution would be:

Use a Site-specific browser/Single-Site Browser (SSB), such as Prism, or Fluid. An SSB is a software application that is dedicated to accessing pages from a single source (site) on a computer network. [1] [2]

Does anyone have an opinion on the browser plugin Ghostery? [3] It "seems" to allow web browser users to block these cross site tracking bugs, however I have not yet tested Ghostery fully. According to their website:

What is Ghostery?

Ghostery is a browser tool available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer. It scans the page for  scripts, pixels, and other elements and notifies the user of the companies whose code is present on the page. 

These page elements aren't otherwise visible to the user, and often not detailed in the page source code. Ghostery allows users to learn more about these companies and their practices, and block the page elements from loading if the user chooses.

"block.... if the user chooses" - this for me is the key. 

Has anyone tested this plugin to see what information is leaked back to Ghostery servers?

thanks.
Bernard

[1]: https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prism/ Unfortunately now discontinued.
[2]: http://fluidapp.com/ 
[3]: http://www.ghostery.com/about


On 25 May 2012, at 08:33, The Dod wrote:

> It used to be easy: Facebook spies on you when you browse 3rd party sites, twitter doesn't.
> 
> 
> But now that twitter begins to spy on users who visit a 3rd site you visit has a "tweet this" link, (and updates its privacy policy accordingly), would webmaster gradually lose the option to include "non-snitching" share links like twitter's /intent/tweet/ and facebook's /sharer.php?
> 
> Even if the situation doesn't escalate in the future, like buttons are already spying on you today (not on me, because I don't have a facebook account, but pretty soon twitter will be on my tail).
> 
> How can we minimize the damage?
> The key (IMHO) is a webmaster (and user) awareness campaign to use a [yet to be developed] "fetch-a-button" ajax widget with buttons like (lame phrasing): "I want to like this" or "I want to tweet this". These would fetch the code (and thus - snitch) only for people planning to publicly admit they've watched the page :-) 
> 


- --------------------------------------
Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb

IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org

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