Hi,
I'm well aware that companies use cookies and the like to track you as you browse the web. Up until now I didn't mind seeing that ad from Amazon pop up on a webpage advising that the item I was looking at is on sale etc as I say it as a bit of give-and-take. However, the other day I was browsing someone of a personal nature (not that!) and about an hour later when playing music on youtube an ad came on related to that very topic. It spooked me and I've decided to fight back! I'm a pretty boring web user: I don't have any social media accounts, read mainly news and hobbies, but as I said, I was spooked enough to take action.
So here's what I've done:
Switched from Chrome to Firefox
Installed https Everywhere
Installed Orbot which bounces your web requests through the TOR network
Set duckduckgo as my default browser in Firefox
Initially, I noticed that web pages were slower to load (probably due to Orbot). Also, the search results from duckduckgo aren't as good as Chrome - a lot of times, the first entry is the corresponding wikipedia page. However, I am getting used to it.
I still have Gmail for mail. I will probably keep this as it's a lot of hassle to update all my contacts. But I figure if I only use Google when I am signing into gmail (and sign out afterwards) and then switch to Firefox, then Google will get as little as possible for me.
Implementing the above, was surprisingly easy and quick - about 15 mins end to end.
Does anyone know how to tell which apps on your phone have access to your contacts and gps location? I would like to remove these.
Anything else I could do??
Thanks!
Firefly.
I'm well aware that companies use cookies and the like to track you as you browse the web. Up until now I didn't mind seeing that ad from Amazon pop up on a webpage advising that the item I was looking at is on sale etc as I say it as a bit of give-and-take. However, the other day I was browsing someone of a personal nature (not that!) and about an hour later when playing music on youtube an ad came on related to that very topic. It spooked me and I've decided to fight back! I'm a pretty boring web user: I don't have any social media accounts, read mainly news and hobbies, but as I said, I was spooked enough to take action.
So here's what I've done:
Switched from Chrome to Firefox
Installed https Everywhere
Installed Orbot which bounces your web requests through the TOR network
Set duckduckgo as my default browser in Firefox
Initially, I noticed that web pages were slower to load (probably due to Orbot). Also, the search results from duckduckgo aren't as good as Chrome - a lot of times, the first entry is the corresponding wikipedia page. However, I am getting used to it.
I still have Gmail for mail. I will probably keep this as it's a lot of hassle to update all my contacts. But I figure if I only use Google when I am signing into gmail (and sign out afterwards) and then switch to Firefox, then Google will get as little as possible for me.
Implementing the above, was surprisingly easy and quick - about 15 mins end to end.
Does anyone know how to tell which apps on your phone have access to your contacts and gps location? I would like to remove these.
Anything else I could do??
Thanks!
Firefly.