Browsing the WWW and your privacy

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WeLuvIbiza

Active Member
OK, so it's blowing up again in the UK. One way or another Cameron will get his way and make it legal to snoop on anything he so wishes.

BUT, what about your day to day browsing? Which search engine do you use? Have you noticed more and more ads being forced on you?

I have been using google.com for eons, and started using google chrome a year or two back.

This is a bad idea and bad combination, between the two of them they end up knowing every single thing about you!! The ads they are now forcing upon the browsing experience are beyond a joke. In addition it has become unstable (possibly due to all the advertising bloatware). I just exchanged comments with a woman on Google+ who told me ad blockers should not be used as the ads pay for the www. Personally I spend fortunes online and find online on products and services I research, ads will actually force me not to buy something.

Firefox now re-installed, chrome dumped.

google.com dumped, bing.com being used (for the moment).
 
There is a lot of free content out there.
Bandwidth costs money, servers cost money. You need some way to pay for this, so you end up with Ads. Paying for services works, but you'll only pay for a few.
Also, Google's data centres are the biggest in the world. They cost an awful lot of money to run. I'd prefer to see ads and that google search bar be kept free.

As for the privacy thing: At some point, the privacy laws will get pushed through, it's a matter of when rather than if.
 
It really is a sad and frightening state of affairs. The Lib Dems/Tories were supposedly meant to be more pro civil liberties than Labour and now, amongst all the other crap they're foisting upon us, we hear of more snooping and secret trials. :evil:
 
They can keep my search info if they wish. I have nothing to hide. Adblock hides the adverts anyway.

As for the Government and ISP storing data then that's fine by my also. It can only be searched with a court order and I don't plan on doing anything illegal in my life that would warrant a caught order being issued against me.
 
shane_saintsfc said:
They can keep my search info if they wish. I have nothing to hide. Adblock hides the adverts anyway.

As for the Government and ISP storing data then that's fine by my also. It can only be searched with a court order and I don't plan on doing anything illegal in my life that would warrant a caught order being issued against me.
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I have no problem with anyone keeping my search data, it is the popup ads that appear on every site regardless of content that are most annoying. For instance, was looking for car hire recently, afterwards, every single site I visited, car hire popups were in my face. Sorry Ikoda, but I feel no moral obligation to endure intrusive online ads to ensure Google et al make even more billions of pounds profit next year. Firefox & ad blocker = sorted :lol:
 
Do you not all think they've been doing this for years?? spying on what you do on the internet? because they have :) they're just making it public now - plus its stopped people complaining about Petrolgate and Pastygate for now
 
Agree - don't want the nation turning into a big brother state - and am vehemently opposed to all these snooping plans.

...but I'm also quite "meh" about the whole thing. I'm more interested in why people are so paranoid about the age of open source. What have they got to hide?

The social media age (and beyond) seems to have a habit of weeding out truth regardless of the motives of governments.

I'm not a paedo, mass murderer, drug baron or celebrity - therefore if anyone wants to bore themselves looking at my online habits, munted club photos and pointless status updates then they're more than welcome.

If you post things online then imagine them skywritten.

I've always been crap at compartmentalising my life so if employers want to look me up and down, that's fair game.
 
I don't quite buy that, Rob.
If everything we put on the net is open to anyone and everyone, then that basically kills it as a medium for communicating with the people close to us.
That's why there's always such an uproar when Facebook screws around with its privacy settings again (for example)
 
Oh I most definitely agree it's an issue. ;)

I'm just not quivering with fear about it at the mo.
 
If you put it online it is in the public square. The emails you send can are monitored for key words; national security services have been doing it for years.
 
You let them do this and you just get more of it - more laws, more snooping, etc - and all for the benefit of the super rich. If Labour had got in again, we'd all be carrying ID cards by now. Do people really want and trust all these intrusions and checks? Even if you're not doing anything 'wrong' precisely, you might not want people to know about your communications and searches. Well, I don't anyway.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
You let them do this and you just get more of it - more laws, more snooping, etc - and all for the benefit of the super rich. If Labour had got in again, we'd all be carrying ID cards by now. Do people really want and trust all these intrusions and checks? Even if you're not doing anything 'wrong' precisely, you might not want people to know about your communications and searches. Well, I don't anyway.
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People won't know about your coms and searches unless you have done something for the courts to issue a warrant.
 
WeLuvIbiza said:
Sorry Ikoda, but I feel no moral obligation to endure intrusive online ads to ensure Google et al make even more billions of pounds profit next year. Firefox & ad blocker = sorted :lol:
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The thing is if it wasn't the Car Hire ad there, you'd still get another ad showing something else, so the fact its more linked to you should make it better surely?

I do understand your point of view (about it feeling intrusive) even if I don't share it. Working in PPC advertising this is something quite close to me and the recent uproar on cookies laws and privacy I find quite annoying.

People that say "I don't want Google knowing what sites ive been to" etc
Errr.. there's billions of people using Google, what makes you think you're so important they'll take particular interest in what you're doing??!!!

There's talk websites now will be forced to ask each visitor if they are happy to drop cookies in their computers when they first land on their site. If they say no they're going to have a damn tougher time navigating and buying anything that's for sure, thats if they'll even let you buy anything or even go in.

This issue has to be separated from the Gov looking at emails, even though I agree with those who say if you have nothing to hide then why are you worried.
 
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear = sleep walking into more controls, laws and monitoring. How about starting from the point 'what friggin right has the govt got to monitor every communication?' What i don't understand is that they already do track stuff to some extent, so this must give extra powers..
 
does using something like 'piriform cookie cleaner' get rid of all cookies each day?

my interweb people stuck it on my laptop and said each day when you log out to let it clear the days cookies

please be assured I ain't no computer whizz so tbh they could have said stick your laptop in the icecube tray of the freezer every day and i'd believe them!
 
Johnny Vodka said:
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear = sleep walking into more controls, laws and monitoring. How about starting from the point 'what friggin right has the govt got to monitor every communication?' What i don't understand is that they already do track stuff to some extent, so this must give extra powers..
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Whilst I have absolutely nothing to hide from big brother it is the principal and the manner in which it is being 'sold' as a national security issue.

It is always the terrorism stick used at the outset, use the fear factor to let joe soap think it is for our own good, it's cobblers and nothing to do with national security. If terrorists want to use the web for comms, it would take absolutely no effort whatsoever to ensure everything they sent / received was totally utterly and completely unreadable to anyone except the intended recipient.

We should take any further foraging discussions underground, jv:lol:
 
Johnny Vodka said:
What i don't understand is that they already do track stuff to some extent, so this must give extra powers..
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They've been monitoring all e-mails, telephone calls etc for years now. No doubt they can't act on all the goldmine of trivial info about petty misdemeanours fast enough and want records kept so they can do people for minor offences they talked about years after the event.

Can hear the headlines now ... telephone records from 5 years ago proved that Mr F, 59, of Solihull admitted using the "F" word in public to his daughter during a conversation intercepted by the government's monitoring centre. He has been ordered by Magistrates to wash his mouth out with soap and water, and to do 100 hours of community service.
 
Browse through an encrypted VPN with an IP blocker, use Firefox with Adblock plus and in private browsing mode.

Not saying it deals with all of the above but it's probably as much as you can do if you live somewhere with stringent content control (for example)....

;)
 
26th of May the Cookie privacy law comes into place..


I think most of the big companies are going to risk it and do nothing until someone gets slapped in the wrist..

This video explains it all perfectly.. and why it's a nonsensical law!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hLmX9FX2KA


BT have taken this on in a clever way, go to their website and you'll see what i mean.
 
Ferd said:
26th of May the Cookie privacy law comes into place..


I think most of the big companies are going to risk it and do nothing until someone gets slapped in the wrist..

This video explains it all perfectly.. and why it's a nonsensical law!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hLmX9FX2KA


BT have taken this on in a clever way, go to their website and you'll see what i mean.
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How strange - was in a meeting about this when you posted that.
 
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