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Google at it again... 
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After the last few weeks, you would have thought Google hat learnt their lesson.

First, they were tracking you, even if you had disabled tracking on your phone, because, of course, not tracking the phone has nothing to do with tracking you, which was done over the web options on their online dashboard and wasn't influenced by the phone settings.

Then they upset people by saying that they were blending out "the unimportant bits" of the URL in Chrome, like "www." or "m.", which got people up in arms.

Then, at the end of last week, they upset people again as it became apparent, that if you signed onto a Google website, it would now automatically log you into Chrome as well. A lot of people didn't want that, had never asked for it and found it obnoxious and, in some cases "dangerous" - E.g. if you "borrow" a PC and log onto Gmail to check your mail, you log back out of GMail, but you are still logged into the Browser, after you have left the machine.

And now, it transpires that Chrome 69 also doesn't clear Google cookies. If you go into the browser settings and chose to clear all cookies, it clears all non-Google cookies, but any cookies relating to Google properties remain there and you remain, therefore, logged into the Google properties (if you didn't manually log out of them).

But, hey, it is all okay, because its Google and their motto was "don't be evil." But they dropped that a while back, and we are beginning to see why.

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Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:04 am
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They all want you and as many of you details as possible. Google, FaceBook, Apple, Microsoft, and a whole load more. This is the way things are going, and I don‘t think they’ll stop any time soon. They’ll all just keep pushing the boundaries to see what they can get away with.

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Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:45 am
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That is one of the reasons I still use Firefox. It isn't perfect, but it doesn't have the world's biggest tracking and ad-agency writing the code.

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"Do you know what this is? Hmm? No, I can see you do not. You have that vacant look in your eyes, which says hold my head to your ear, you will hear the sea!" - Londo Molari

Executive Producer No Agenda Show 246


Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:50 am
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I've always used Firefox as my browser on my own PC's*'.
We have had Chrome on the works laptop for a while, but I've just installed Firefox on there too. It has one login for everyone from our company on the rig. Guess I can't risk logging into my own Google accounts on that any more.

* (Okay. Netscape and Mozilla back in the day)

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Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:28 pm
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I still use FF and don't use chrome. I have uBlock Origins this year given that Adaware allows adverts. I've been using Bing more and more for searches.

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Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:09 am
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Yes, I use Friefox, NoScript and Ghostery most of the time and use DuckDuckGo or Bing for search.

I also have over 55,000 entries in my hosts file, blocking advertising, tracking and known malware sites, and the whole of Facebook (1,500 domains on its own!).

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"Do you know what this is? Hmm? No, I can see you do not. You have that vacant look in your eyes, which says hold my head to your ear, you will hear the sea!" - Londo Molari

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Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:09 am
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I've tried Duckduckgo but it's pretty pants for my needs, hence avoided it.

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Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:11 am
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That is the problem, either it is tailored to your needs or you can use a search engine that doesn't track you...

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"Do you know what this is? Hmm? No, I can see you do not. You have that vacant look in your eyes, which says hold my head to your ear, you will hear the sea!" - Londo Molari

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Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:26 am
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big_D wrote:
Yes, I use Friefox, NoScript and Ghostery most of the time and use DuckDuckGo or Bing for search.

I also have over 55,000 entries in my hosts file, blocking advertising, tracking and known malware sites, and the whole of Facebook (1,500 domains on its own!).

Safari warns that Ghostery can slow it down, but I’m running it anyway.

I’d not considered using a hosts file for this kind of thing before.

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brataccas wrote:
your posts are just combo chains of funny win

I’m on Twitter, tweeting away... My Photos Random Avatar Explanation


Thu Sep 27, 2018 10:31 am
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cloaked_wolf wrote:
I've tried Duckduckgo but it's pretty pants for my needs, hence avoided it.
+1

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pcernie wrote:
'I'm going to snort this off your arse - for the benefit of government statistics, of course.'


Thu Sep 27, 2018 11:05 am
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The VPN I use also has features for blocking tracking /adverts.

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pcernie wrote:
'I'm going to snort this off your arse - for the benefit of government statistics, of course.'


Thu Sep 27, 2018 11:07 am
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I use the following lists:

https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/b ... cebook/all

https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Some of the someonewhocares list is commented out, because it can cause problems with certain websites, you can decide whether to leave them commented out or not.

The Github dev has lists for Facebook, Pinterest, Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare. You can apply the ones you don't want to see.

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"Do you know what this is? Hmm? No, I can see you do not. You have that vacant look in your eyes, which says hold my head to your ear, you will hear the sea!" - Londo Molari

Executive Producer No Agenda Show 246


Thu Sep 27, 2018 11:09 am
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