Comments on: Online Privacy – a Nice Dream?

By: Your Mobile Carrier Will Sell You for Pennies | Telecom Update

Your Mobile Carrier Will Sell You for Pennies | Telecom Update — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:09:31 +0000

[...] move may not mean anything to its 175 million-odd customers, but it’s a great example of the prevailing attitude towards privacy (or rather, the lack thereof) on the [...]

By: Your Mobile Carrier Will Sell You for Pennies | The Click

Your Mobile Carrier Will Sell You for Pennies | The Click — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:49:19 +0000

[...] move may not mean anything to its 175 million-odd customers, but it’s a great example of the prevailing attitude towards privacy (or rather, the lack thereof) on the [...]

By: Your Mobile Carrier Will Sell You for Pennies

Your Mobile Carrier Will Sell You for Pennies — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:40:05 +0000

[...] move may not mean anything to its 175 million-odd customers, but it’s a great example of the prevailing attitude towards privacy (or rather, the lack thereof) on the [...]

By: WebWorkerDaily » Archive Maintaining Privacy as an Online Freelancer «

WebWorkerDaily » Archive Maintaining Privacy as an Online Freelancer « — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:00:39 +0000

[...] of Twitter also let the public know what they’re up to most of the day. Here at WWD, we also discussed the lack of privacy of the average web user when it comes to their browsing [...]

By: Janos

Janos — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:46:28 +0000

An additional solution to avoid “The Ever Watchful Eye of Google” is obfuscation. The idea is to generate fake queries to mask your real queries and deceive search-profiling. This approach can be extended to also deceive Phorm tracking. Two (free) Firefox add-ons use this approach to protect privacy:
SquiggleSR (that I develop): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5986
TrackMeNot: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3173

By: Web Worker Daily » Archive Trade Privacy for Ads with Hotspot Shield «

Web Worker Daily » Archive Trade Privacy for Ads with Hotspot Shield « — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:00:07 +0000

[...] concerned about the sort of behavior tracking being carried out by companies like NebuAd and Phorm, then AnchorFree has a deal for you. Download and run their Hotspot Shield application (for either [...]

By: Web Worker Daily » Archive Think You Own Your Own Clicks? Think Again. «

Sat, 17 May 2008 18:00:11 +0000

[...] previously covered some of the furor in the UK over the activities of ad network Phorm, who has partnered with major [...]

By: Crowdstorm

Crowdstorm — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:29:02 +0000

It is a big scary how ‘big brother’ society is becoming – not just re: privacy on the web. It’s probably more worrying for people who don’t work in the internet industry, as they’re much less likely to hear about/understand how to combat these issues.

By: Marcin Grodzicki

Marcin Grodzicki — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:08:03 +0000

On one hand – it’s kind of creepy Big Brother issue. I do loads of stuff on my computer – most of it work, some of it fun and the rest, well… That’s purely my business. I don’t want anyone poking in here, as much as I don’t want anyone poking in my living room. On the other hand – the net is not my living room. It’s a public space mostly. So if I publish stuff or let my shopping history be visible – I can’t blame anyone for using this information. Tracking people is a different matter, although I don’t really think such systems will change anything significanlty, since 1. some people will stop using those services, 2. other services that don’t do that will show up, 3. people will ultimately always fight back – with software or other solutions.

The one thing that really pisses me off business-wise is why do I have to pay for someone watching me? Why do I pay for not being able to even FFD ads on my DVD? Why do I have to sit and watch ads in a cinema? Why am I getting commercials from my mobile operator that charges me 120USD every month? In other words – why do they always want to earn twice? Are they so greedy?

By: Redigit

Redigit — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:23:20 +0000

I would drop my ISP in a heart beat If they tried to pull that. I just hope in the future there will be enough competition to keep the ISP’s from doing whatever they want. This reminds me of the whole net neutrality issue.

By: Logical Extremes

Logical Extremes — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:33:42 +0000

This is precisely why I feel no guilt in blocking ad servers with my hosts file (along with other protective measures like aggressive cookie management and frequently changing IP addresses, etc). I have not opted in, I have received no benefit, and if I allow tracking I lose all future control of MY data.

Solutions like Ask and Phorm that require an opt-out cookie are ludicrous. As if I’d let that cookie live forever.

Those concerned about privacy and security are better off aggressively managing their own presence on the internet.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:02:15 +0000

It’s ironic that the BBC article asks Google’s Doubleclick property to send assets to your IP address. Such cross-site “web beacons” make it easy to track an IP address as you surf across the wide Web.