Sometimes the best you can get is broken.
I can’t post on Facebook this morning. I can click a few “likes” if I use a plain text browser and log in via the mobile interface FB offers but I still can’t post anything. Am I targeted, part of a sweep or something? FB would never tell and they don’t give a rat’s butt unless they thought it might hurt their ad revenue. Since I actively block most advertising in my browsers, they won’t notice my absence from the activity.
I use several different extensions on my browsers. Each of them are available for Firefox and Chrome/Chromium (or various versions of those two) via the menu system built into the browser. Each one has a repository of approved add-ons that can help you a lot.
I like Adblock, but not Adblock Plus because the latter reduces user control. With the original tool, you have the option to add specific annoying ads on various sites, blocking them from where they are served or only where you happen to see them. You get fine control over what you block.
Ghostery reduces the threat of tracking via tagged images in your cache. It’s easy to hide unique identifying markers inside any image file and these can be read by the servers that provide them, or by their advertising affiliates. In Firefox, you also have the option of blocking en masse certain tracking cookies, too. This is part of Mozilla’s long-standing fine-toothed control over cookies. However, it’s wise to set Chrome/Chromium to treat all cookies as session cookies (automatically deleting them when you close the browser).
I also like Click & Clean as a way to clean your browser caches without having to run a separate cleaner (BleachBit or CCleaner). Some sites are so aggressive about packing images, cookies and JavaScript junk into your browser that you should stop and clean before moving on to the next site. This particular add-on has gotten a little overly complicated these days, but if you poke around the menu system for it, you’ll find a way to set it up and clean all the stuff.
This is just like Slimboat‘s “clean trace” found in the menu system under Tools > Privacy. The standard cleaners don’t recognize Slimboat, but it does most of the privacy stuff itself, and rather aggressively at that. Slimboat still has a lot of bugs, but it’s coming along.
A lot of what you need to do for your own safety depends on your choice of activities online. In my case, it’s a matter of controlling my virtual identity. I noted some time ago that when you run one of those Internet traces on my name through the advertising data collectors, you’ll get a lot of false data. That’s how it should be. I don’t want them knowing much about me. It’s not as if I can hide from the government; I’m already deeply compromised simply because I use the VA medical care system. It’s only slightly less intrusive than applying for food stamps, but much easier for the federal government to check. So it’s the advertisers I can still avoid and they are creepier in many ways. They don’t have guns, so they have to use all sorts of hideous manipulation strategies that governments don’t bother with. Advertisers won’t hesitate to take advantage of knowledge about how humans react in various contexts, and will do all they can to prevent you finding out. Most of them act like it’s some kind of game, like online virtual battles — real people are reduced to mere avatars.
The difference between a crook and a marketer is too thin to notice. Crooks dance around the laws they want to exploit; marketers only pretend to support our legal system. I tend to lump them together a lot because they act so much the same in virtual space. Currently the most egregious malware exploits come via advertising that many sites insert into their webpages. They are so desperate for a few bucks that the site administrators simply allow just about anyone to place a linking window on their page. Most ads are served up from external servers. And most of those advertising companies are egregiously irresponsible about checking their advertisers. So any crook can get an account that places their nasty tricks on some of the most mainstream websites as part of the ad rotation system. These ads exploit some hole in your browser or operating system and allow all sorts of evil things, giving someone else virtual control over your computer.
One of the main reasons I run Linux and recommend it is because it resists such efforts to infect and infest computers. Virtually all malware is for Windows, with a small portion for Macs. Precious little of it works on Linux in any way at all. I’m not going to pretend I can block the NSA; if they want into my system, they’ll get in. But the vast majority of criminal efforts won’t mess with Linux computers except as servers, not as ordinary desktop machines. They’ll crack into a Linux server because it offers better use than many Windows servers. Desktop machines aren’t worth their trouble, and it would be an awful lot of work for them to come up with an exploit that plants malware on a Linux system. And it’s too easy for Linux users to fix their machines, unlike Windows, which has tons of obscure secret ways the user is locked out of controlling their own computer.
The thing with government snooping — while governments can hold a gun to your head, they are generally less competent. Their heads are in the wrong place, a broken frame of reference. That is, the NSA idiots scoop up all the data they can get, but can’t even stop an amateur terrorist. Frankly, what they are after is commercial data. It’s industrial spying with a badge. They’ll stop a terrorist who might hurt the big corporations based in the US or owned by the right plutocrats, but they can’t be bothered to protect ordinary people.
And none of the rules apply to government. Laws are their property, so they obey only what suits them. If there is any physical possibility of intercepting data on the Net, they are doing it. Remember that noise a couple of weeks ago when we found out the NSA had a physical tap on the interior networks? The folks working at Google were pissed and started encrypting their internal traffic wherever the cables ran out of their physical control between various locations. MS says they are thinking about it, and Yahoo won’t even say.
Old timers with out-of-date morals still insist the government is not really evil, that it built the Internet. That’s false; the government simply allowed some really smart private individuals to build it, then took control as much as they understood it. Even today most elected and appointed government officials are nearly clueless about it. It’s the likes of the NSA, not even really the CIA or FBI, who have a clue. The NSA got their spies into every part of the Internet business and all the private, corporate and government agencies involved in running it. But they still are probably the least competent among them in certain ways. They are so obsessed with control that they can’t understand what’s obvious before their eyes, that this thing will soon escape their control by its very nature. They don’t see the rising Network Civilization. Oh, they may understand it as an artifact of how folks think and act, but not as a truth that will crush them.
They don’t see how the folks pushing out in the interest of their own needs will find a way to completely bypass the old world government controls.
