Avoid Google snooping?

Consider how many avoid being tracked or spied on, lots of different ways to be tracked regardless of the browser or domain.

So privacy advocates tell us how to avoid 6,000 or more trackers.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/04/adguard_cname_tracker/

Conversation 16 comments

  • simont

    Premium Member
    05 March, 2021 - 10:24 am

    <p>This is not Google snooping, but rather ad company snooping. It's a major security issue as well as a privacy issue as the ad companies can get any cookies from your PC. Including Facebook and Gmail cookies.</p><p><br></p><p>This was covered in Security Weekly as well. </p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      05 March, 2021 - 11:29 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#616678">In reply to simont:</a></em></blockquote><p>Only if Google or Facebook use these trackers, which seems unlikely, as they have their own. </p><p>But you are correct, they can access any 1st party cookies on affected sites, which is bad, if they have session information or personal information. </p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    05 March, 2021 - 10:30 am

    <p>Ublock Origin handles this, I know. Brave and Safari handle it natively.</p>

    • anoldamigauser

      Premium Member
      05 March, 2021 - 11:00 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#616680">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>My take on this was that UBlock Origin and AdGuard could handle this only on Firefox, since it has an API for evaluating DNS, that is lacking in Chrome and Edge.</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        05 March, 2021 - 11:27 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#616686">In reply to AnOldAmigaUser:</a></em></blockquote><p>Correct, uBlock Origin cannot block this in Chrome/Chromium, only on Firefox. </p><p>And Safari also can't counter this, according to the article, just reduce the life of the cookies. </p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        06 March, 2021 - 8:48 am

        Yep, correct. Sorry about that.

    • megamuffin

      05 March, 2021 - 1:26 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#616680">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>why not just use adguard dns on the router instead of browser extensions.</em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>or host file blocking </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        06 March, 2021 - 8:43 am

        Yep, that’s even better.

  • anoldamigauser

    Premium Member
    05 March, 2021 - 10:32 am

    <p>Is there a text file that lists the 6000 tracking domains? The repository appeared to list them individually. I would prefer my systems resolve them locally to 0.0.0.0</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      05 March, 2021 - 11:25 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#616681">In reply to AnOldAmigaUser:</a></em></blockquote><p>There is a text file for each tracker, so around 10 files. </p>

  • winner

    05 March, 2021 - 10:12 pm

    <p>Speaking of spying, did you hear that Outlook had a breach and there are over 30,000 compromised organizations by Chinese hackers?</p><p>Just so you don't think getting rid of Google gets rid of spying.</p>

    • simont

      Premium Member
      06 March, 2021 - 3:22 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#616797">In reply to Winner:</a></em></blockquote><p>Not Outlook, on-site Exchange (Exchange does email and calenders for business) servers</p>

  • ken10

    06 March, 2021 - 9:01 am

    <p>I highly recommend people add a whole network DNS filter like pi-hole if they have the skills to do so. I added two pi-hole devices to my network (redundancy) and now every device on my network inherits the black hole filtering. We are a family with two kids and once I did this, I noticed that I consistently see 8-12% of ALL of my internet traffic blocked. That means that 8-12% of all my network traffic previously was junk and tracking. I have tuned my pihole to block more than advertisments – malware and top level domain rogue nation states (Russian, North Korea, etc). The value in this is that if for some reason a machine is compromised, it reduces likelihood of "reach back" to servers (e.g BOTNET server). </p><p><br></p><p>A pi-hole is a black hole for DNS reqeusts. Effectively, if when a lookup is performed, the pi-hole will effectively not resolve/lookup and the request "dies on the vine". It means that the request does not even leave your network and use bandwidth for junk. It also reduces trackability. </p><p><br></p><p>For full awareness, I was surprised to see certain devices on the network, especially IoT and moreso *Smart TVs*, will bypass my network DNS server with hard coded DNS lookups to Google (8.8.8.8) or Quad9 (9.9.9.9) or CloudFlare (1.1.1.1). This forced me to add a firewall to my network and have it intercept and rewrite DNS requests that are not using my DNS filtering. That was enlightening to see how often that happened.</p><p><br></p><p>Interesting insights into Automatic Content Recognition (ACR).</p><p>https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smart-tv-snooping-features/</p><p><br></p><p>CloudFlare has a nice free service "for families". You can use 1.1.1.2/ 1.0.0.2 (malware filters) and 1.1.1.3/ 1.0.0.3 (malware/ adult filters). </p><p><br></p><p>All of this information is to provide you some insight into what is happening on your network beyond your browser. Even if you can not implement a firewall to DNS intercept, the pi-hole itself was valuable on day one.</p><p><br></p>

  • megamuffin

    07 March, 2021 - 9:32 am

    <blockquote><em><a href="#616805">In reply to Waethorn:</a></em></blockquote><p>Haha, I thought GOP was the business friend.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      08 March, 2021 - 8:40 am

      The biggest lie in politics is getting people to vote against their own interests.

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