Here’s how you can thwart websites from tracking your every movement.
The money trail
Nearly all commercial websites use them to create an elaborate profile of your tastes and habits, a profile that the websites can use themselves or sell to others.
Your online movements are tracked by cookies (bits of code left in your web browser), Google and Facebook tracker software (that follows you even when you aren’t on their websites), session recorders (that record everything you do on a website), key-loggers (that record what you type into text boxes on a website, even if you don’t submit anything), beacons (invisible objects in a web page that record how many times you viewed that page) and “fingerprinting” (a record of the technical details of your computer that can be used to identify you.)
While privacy advocates are aware of web trackers, most people aren’t. As a result, web tracking keeps expanding.
A recent study showed that 87% of the most popular websites now track your movements, whether you sign in to the website or not (see tinyurl.com/yyy5qyas).
You can view the web trackers on any website at tinyurl.com/y2em59e6.
Also, Windows 10 may indeed attract more web tracker software, because it collects more personal information about you than earlier versions of Windows did.
Microsoft shares some of that information with advertisers.
Throw it off track
Until recently, web browsers didn’t offer much protection against web tracking.
The latest versions of the four most popular browsers – Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari – have improved (but not perfect) anti-tracking features.
A reviewer of the latest Safari browser reported that it blocked 90 web trackers in five minutes of online activity.
But be sure your browser’s anti-tracking features are turned on.
Also, adjust the privacy settings in Windows 10.
The Windows 10 settings you may want to change include the “advertising ID” (monitors your online travels for advertisers), “location tracking” (helps advertisers localise what they promote to you), “Timeline” (keeps track of what you’re doing so that you can switch from one PC to another without interruption) and Cortana, the Windows 10 digital assistant (monitors your location, email, contacts, and calendar, and keeps a record of every “chat” you’ve had with Cortana).
You can also add more anti-tracking add-ons to your web browser.
Top-rated add-ons include Duckduckgo Privacy Essentials, Privacy Badger and Ghostery. – Star Tribune/tribune News Service - By STEVEN ALEXANDER
Trying to stop the invasion of the web trackers | Star Tribune
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Have you ever wondered how websites and apps track you on the net? Why do other websites show you advertisements from Amazon about exactly the product you looked at before? How does online tracking work? We explain to you how Google, Facebook and Co track you on the Internet. What is your opinion about online tracking? Write it in the comments...
What Google & Co know about you | Online Tracking
https://youtu.be/iB9l56j4mg8
Tech Q&A: Trying to stop the invasion of the web trackers ...
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