In the murky world of Cookies …

This brief report from Reuters is worth reading carefully: **LINK**

https://www.reuters.com/article/alphabet-britain-cookies-idCNFWN2UL1LN

MichaelG.

MichaelG:

Thanks for this which is presumably of most interest to Chrome users.

I appreciate your practice of "spelling ou" the link as I like to know in advance where I am going on the web.

You can (and should) block 3rd party cookies in your web browser settings.

Related to this, countries in the EU are now banning the use of google-analytics:

**LINK**

Which I think is about time...

Even disabling cookies doesn't stop the more sneaky ways of tracking. One of them is to embed a small image on a page, and when your browser goes to fetch that small image, it is tracked by the server.

I'd advise everyone to install an adblocker in their browser (I use uBlock origin).

Ega, if you hover over a link with your mouse it should show you the address it links to.

DD:

Thanks for the tip - I did know of it but find it doesn't always work for me.

Prefer the round ones with chocolate bits in ...

The Chrome browser is another of Google's tools for harvesting data about users. By using it, you are playing Google's game and supplying Google with data about yourself and your activities that you might not (should not) want shared or sold.

Chromium is the free, open-source version of Chrome. It is touted as being more private and more secure than Chrome, but there's still bits of Google in it. It's probably a step in the right direction, but not far enough. 'Ungoogled chromium' is a development of Chromium that aims to remove as much as possible of Google's dirty tricks from the browser. Wikipedia has a page on it.

Browsers are just too complicated, with all sorts of strange functions operating. Even Firefox is suspect. For the paranoid, there are many of its settings that can and should be changed from default values, but it's a little tedious. Remember, if you're 'connected', someone is trying to harvest data from your device, and, unless you take steps, little is done to frustrate them by default.

Also, use a script blocker. You can turn off many of Google's scripts with impunity.

I use Firefox with its Adblocker addon. Also Malwarebytes which warns of dodgey websites. Mind you I want to use the internet and not block everything that turns up. Cookies for the minute are something we have to tolerate to a certain extent.

regards

Not sure about "even" .... FF is a lot more (unnecessarily) complicated than it used to be. The result of trying to compete with Chrome perhaps.

A couple of days ago my esr version (which is supposed to be rather less "beta" than the regular release) wanted to update. So I said OK.

Now I can't log on to my online banking with FF. Turning off all the add-ons doesn't help. Thank goodness I also have an installation of Vivaldi.

Do ad-blockers also stop ones we might actually want, such as those down the side of this forum? (Though I find their constant, rapid-change act in the corner of my eye, irritating.)

It's hard to generalise what will be blocked. The ones on the side here are not being blocked because they are simple images hosted from this site itself rather than something like google ads.

It does sometimes cause issues with websites not working correctly because external scripts and such are blocked. If that happens you can just temporarily disable it (or disable it for specific sites) by clciking the adblockers icon in the top right of your browser. It gets very granular if you want full control.

It’s interesting to see how Google’s initiative is being reported this week: **LINK**

https://www.popsci.com/technology/google-announces-android-privacy-policy/

In case anyone missed my original point … here is the relevant text from that Reuters report

[quote]
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating Alphabet Inc’s Google’s plan to cut support for some cookies in Chrome - an initiative called the “Privacy Sandbox” - because it is worried it will impede competition in digital advertising. [/quote]

i.e. it’s not the consumers’ interests that the CMA is protecting, but those of the third-party advertisers.

MichaelG.