[Info-vax] Browser Tracking, was: Re: [OT] Real Usenet clients, was: Re: backups and compaction or nocompaction might be better

[Paul Sture]

In article <keb8mm$aej$1 at dont-email.me>,
 Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:

> I avoid these problems by having Firefox clear _all_ session data when
> the browser is shutdown; no one ever gets a chance to build up a cookie
> based history on me spanning across sessions.

That is something I should look at. Thanks.

> NoScript is also mandatory for me and I don't even have Flash installed;
> I don't need it for most things and whenever I want to watch something on
> YouTube I just download it from YouTube and watch it offline using Xine.

NoScript and Adblock Plus have relieved most of the pain here.  Indeed 
when I recently did a wipe and reinstall on someone else's Windows 
system, for the programs I wanted to install some allegedly legitimate 
sites made it exceedingly difficult to avoid downloading registry 
cleaners and the like by mistake; the combination of the above modules 
made the task *much* easier (there are also quite a few download sites 
which manage to get to the top of search engine pages, but aren't the 
original source of the software, and various of these sites want you to 
download their own crapware; you need to look at the URL to get the 
genuine source).

Flash is trickier to get rid of, since it is used for a lot of 
tutorials, but there is nothing to stop me using a browser in a virtual 
machine instead.

-- 
Paul Sture