Big tech

[Barleymower]

I'm not a prolific user of social media. Everytime I get anywhere near it, it worries me. Tell all about yourself, share your details, allow us to monitor your traffic and share it with our partners.

I appreciate that even using this phone/device I'm allowing big tech to know everything about me but I don't really know to what extent. Does anyone know how much data or ours they have?

With my last phone a Google pixel 3. I meticulously switch everything off which shared my info and guess what? Yes the phone almost stopped working.

I have thought about subscribing to a VPN like Nord VPN. Are they worth it?

Mostly I would like to rid my phone of the constant cookie requests. I use a few browsers like duck duck go, quant and keepsafe. None of them fully stop the constant cookie requests. Any advice?

I know some of the guys on the forum are very proficient techies (Coder and Carl come to mind). Thanks in advance.

[Coder]

Can you describe what you mean by cookie requests? Are these the "accept/reject" cookie warnings? Or is this moreso just the fact that sites use cookies to track you?

[crfriend]

Mostly I would like to rid my phone of the constant cookie requests. I use a few browsers like duck duck go, quant and keepsafe. None of them fully stop the constant cookie requests. Any advice?

With any luck your 'phone will have an "incognito" mode that won't save cookies persistently; that's what I use any time I connect to something I don't trust very highly, and all the cookies that may get shoved at me disappear when I close the window.

My biggest hatred is the ubiquitous advertising on the Web, and since I run my own DNS servers, I've spent a lot of time identifying advertising "providers" and use the DNS to completely block the ability of the browsers on my network to look up the IP addresses which yields a nice quiet browsing environment that's largely free of the pollution, even for visitors (some of whom have commented on the matter and wonder what I'm doing. I'm especially hostile when it comes to tracking/stalking sites, and those take priority (e.g. vermin like DoubleClick, owned by Google who are in that case being overtly evil). However, that's an advanced move, and likely out of the reach of the average layman. The list is almost 200 domains as of this writing.

[phathack]

My biggest hatred is the ubiquitous advertising on the Web, and since I run my own DNS servers, I've spent a lot of time identifying advertising "providers" and use the DNS to completely block the ability of the browsers on my network to look up the IP addresses which yields a nice quiet browsing environment that's largely free of the pollution, even for visitors (some of whom have commented on the matter and wonder what I'm doing. I'm especially hostile when it comes to tracking/stalking sites, and those take priority (e.g. vermin like DoubleClick, owned by Google who are in that case being overtly evil). However, that's an advanced move, and likely out of the reach of the average layman. The list is almost 200 domains as of this writing.

I use a Pi Hole DNS Server that's installed on a Raspberry Pi as my DNS Server.
Some sites accuse me of running an Add Blocker. Nope, just a curated DNS server so to speak.

The blocked DNS addresses currently in use:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Steve ... ster/hosts

[Barleymower]

Can you describe what you mean by cookie requests? Are these the "accept/reject" cookie warnings? Or is this moreso just the fact that sites use cookies to track you?

Hi Coder these are accept/reject cookie warnings. It's generally very easy to accept and continue. Rejection involves flicking switches and searching to the reject button. It would be ok if you could carefully set up the phone to accept or reject these privacy intrusions but this is not the case, you have to continually flick switches. I was hoping there would be a brouser that does this for you or maybe a VPN route that avoids the situation all together.

[Coder]

Hi Coder these are accept/reject cookie warnings. It's generally very easy to accept and continue. Rejection involves flicking switches and searching to the reject button. It would be ok if you could carefully set up the phone to accept or reject these privacy intrusions but this is not the case, you have to continually flick switches. I was hoping there would be a brouser that does this for you or maybe a VPN route that avoids the situation all together.

I don't think you can avoid those - the laws in Europe dictate websites must announce to you their cookie policy and give you a choice... I even get them and I'm in the US. I will say - I've never looked into a way to disable them, so perhaps there is a way but I kind of doubt it.

[crfriend]

I don't think you can avoid those - the laws in Europe dictate websites must announce to you their cookie policy and give you a choice... I even get them and I'm in the US. I will say - I've never looked into a way to disable them, so perhaps there is a way but I kind of doubt it.

It depends on how you're using your browser. If you're running in "incognito mode" the thing will delete any cookies once the session ends and you close the window. The cookie settings are stored statefully in -- you guessed it -- a cookie. This sets up the classic chicken/egg problem on the next visit.

[Barleymower]

OK I get it now. Those little biscuits are here to stay. Thanks both.

[geron]

I use a Pi Hole DNS Server that's installed on a Raspberry Pi as my DNS Server.
Some sites accuse me of running an Add Blocker. Nope, just a curated DNS server so to speak.

The blocked DNS addresses currently in use:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Steve ... ster/hosts

Me too. It's cheap, it uses nearly no power, there's at least one good recipe online for setting it up, and it works well with the default block lists. The one change I had to work out for myself was to discover where readers' comments under stories in the online edition of The Times were coming from, because it was blocking those too. I added the address to PiHole's whitelist and all was well.