Cookie 5 9 – Protect Your Online Privacy

  1. How to protect your privacy with third party cookies In order to enjoy some of the conveniences of the modern day internet you’re going to have to put up with some cookies. Many sites use third party cookies as a way to boost their revenue, so it’s likely they’ll block you from seeing content until you accept third party cookies.
  2. Under Cookies, check the “Block third-party cookies and site data” option and click Done. For Firefox, click the three-lined icon in the top-right corner of your screen and select Options (PC.
  3. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and was designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens data privacy and to reshape the way organisations across the region approach data privacy. To comply with new EU regulations, which come into force on May 25th 2018, Delia Online.

All About Cookies.org

New laws have been put in place across the EU to help protect your privacy while online. All websites owned by companies based in the EU should be complying with this law, and if they aren't you can complain about it either to the site owners or to legal authorities that can require websites to comply or face heavy fines. We use cookies for many purposes. We use them, for example, to remember your safe search preferences, to make the ads you see more relevant to you, to count how many visitors we receive to a page, to help you sign up for our services, to protect your data, or to remember your ad settings. You can see a list of the types of cookies used by Google and also find out how Google and our partners.

What is a cookie profiling?

Cookie profiling, also called web profiling, is the use of persistent or permanent cookies to track a user’s overall activity online. This tracking does not just happen when you are on a particular site, but it occurs the whole time you are browsing. This kind of profiling activity is often done by marketers who buy advertising rights on thousands of popular websites in order to collect and collate cookie information and create a single “profile” of a user.

Internet advertising, as it is called, targets potential customers based on the manner they browse the Internet. This is the very reason why most websites flash banner ads on their pages. This matter may not be a big deal for some, but others take their privacy seriously and are uneasy about being “followed around” and profiled.

What Do Cookies Do?

Cookies work as a tagging mechanism to identify your computer out of the millions of users accessing the Internet. The information contained in a cookie is used to track a user’s activity when visiting pages online. This tracking is done anonymously, but the user needs to give permission before a site can store a cookie on the machine. Most web browsers nowadays allow users to disable cookies permanently or delete them upon exit.

Why do cookie profiling?

Privacy And Services Cookies

Cookie profiling is the only way for marketers to target potential customers and obtain a possible product purchase from them. By knowing a user’s browsing habits, including sites visited, age, marital status, and political and religious affiliations, they can show him or her advertisements that are appealing, advertisements that he or she will care to patronize. This is a certain way for marketers to increase their profit by widening their customer base.

Cookie profiling that marketers do is actually less alarming than other attempts of obtaining personal information online. Internet phishing, considered now a cyber crime, is a fraudulent way of acquiring highly sensitive data like credit card information, social security number, usernames, passwords, and bank information. This can definitely harm a victim greatly compared to just being followed around whenever you are online using cookies stored on your computer.

However, if marketers acquire personal information by purchasing them from social networks, that is a different case. Users not knowing that their personal information is being shared can be considered a detestable action, even if some users do not actually take it as offensive.

How is cookie profiling done?

Websites store cookies by automatically storing a text file containing encrypted data on a user’s machine or browser the moment he or she lands on a page online. Whether it is a permanent or a temporary cookie, the idea is to create a “log” of the user to facilitate future visits to the said site. When these cookies are collected to create a certain idea about a user, that is called cookie profiling, or web profiling.

Collated data may include browsing habits, demographic data, and statistical information, which are what marketers are after in order to mark a user. Cookie profiling is performed by advertisers, but the cookies they need to create these profiles are obtained from several online sources, mostly from administrators of popular sites receiving millions of traffic monthly. These administrators collect cookie data and offer them to marketers for extra profit.

Implications of cookie profiling.

Cookie profiling is an advantage for marketers because it empowers them on their advertising efforts. The more users are targeted based on the products they like, the higher the chance they will make a purchase. Additionally, cookie profiling can be used maliciously, for instance, stalking on certain individuals in order to victimize them. Cookies can also help solve crimes, especially now that Internet crimes are becoming rampant. In fact, many governments are using social networking sites to track online criminals, and some of them are being caught using information contained in cookies.

Although you cannot prevent people from creating a profile of you using cookies, you can still protect your privacy in several ways. There are several free programs you can utilize to identify companies trying to store cookies on your machine, or programs you can use to delete hidden cookies on your system. Ghostery is a free add-on you can install on your browser; it detects cookies from 500 companies trying to spy on you, gives you background information about them, and lets you block those cookies whenever you want.

To build an impenetrable privacy wall, you can install session and cookie cleaners, such as CCleaner, on your computer and schedule them to clear your browser and machine from these privacy bugs. Another way is to configure your browser to prohibit accepting cookies from untrusted sites

Cookies and Social Networks

In these times when the Internet has made data collection almost at your fingertips, privacy violations have been hurled at social networking sites, particularly Facebook. Facebook is the biggest website under the said category, and it competes against Google as the most visited site. It has more or less 800 million users from around the world, but that does not keep it invulnerable from the piercing eyes of online-privacy-concerned entities.

Late in November 2011, the European Commission finally acted to stop the social networking site from undermining the safety and privacy of its users. In January 2011, a new EC Directive shall be released in order to formalize the banning of targeted advertising on Facebook.

Facebook, like any other website, utilizes cookies in order to monitor its users. But the problem is that it does not stop tracking after a user signs out of his or her account. Facebook actually uses two kinds of cookies; these two are inserted in your browser when you sign up, while only one of them is inserted when you land at the homepage and does not sign up. Additionally, it uses different parameters for logged-in users, logged-off members, and non-members.

Cookie

Facebook’s cookies record several bits of information, such as your email address, password, friends, types of posts, and things you like, among others. However, it also uses cookies that work together with its social plug-ins—popularly called the “Like” and “Share” buttons; these cookies record the date, time, and websites you visited. With these cookies, Facebook can paint a picture of your browsing behavior and can identify your religious affiliations, political leanings, sexual orientation, and many other things about you.

Where does Facebook draw the line between privacy infringement and improving its service? Amidst the issues being thrown at Facebook, its representatives said that it does track users after logging out, but it is done for good reasons. Arturo Bejar, a Facebook engineer, clarified that the cookies that record information once a user logs out are for security and protection purposes.

These cookies actually help identify phishers and spammers, detect people behind unauthorized logged-in attempts, disable registration for minors using false birthdate, distinguish shared computers in order to disable the “keep me logged in” option, and helps users access their hacked accounts.

Facebook denies that it uses logged-off cookies in order to sell the information it gathers to third parties. It adds that the cookies are there to personalize the use of the site, to improve the service, and to keep safety and protection at its highest possible level. Moreover, data gathered using plug-ins are anonymized and aggregated, so any of them do not point to specific users. Also, collected data older than 90 days are automatically deleted from the system.

As said, cookies are harmless if you allow trusted sites to use them, but you must reconsider allowing second-rate sites on saving your information. If you do not want being tracked, you can disable cookies on your browser permanently, or you can set it to delete temporary cookies when you exit. Also, you can use plug-ins or add-ons that block harmful cookies; there are also free services online that let you detect online trackers, know what they are for, and let you be in control.

Whoa, you aren't browsing with Javascript, congratulations! You probably don't need this tutorial, which will look broken for you. Just install an adblocker with a privacy/tracking protection list, block third-party cookies, block referers, and install HTTPS Everywhere.

In less than 10 minutes, you can drastically improve your privacy online and protect yourself against unwanted and invisible tracking.

Note that these privacy safeguards will also be blocking some ads. EFF is working with online advertisers to try to convince them to provide real privacy protections for users, but until they agree to meaningful standards about online tracking, these steps will be necessary for users to safeguard their browsing privacy. Aside from removing ads, these changes won't affect your browsing experience on the vast majority of websites. It's possible, however, that a tiny fraction of websites may behave differently or break, in which case the easiest solution is to temporarily use a 'private browsing' mode without the settings enabled, or a fresh browser profile/user with default settings.

Step 1: Install Adblock Plus

Get Adblock Plus. After it is installed, be sure to change your filter preferences to add EasyPrivacy:

Then go to 'Add Filter Subscription' -> 'Add a different subscription' and select 'EasyPrivacy':


Step 2: Change Cookie Settings

Now you are going to set your cookies to expire when you exit your browser, and disallow third-party cookies from being set. To do this, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy. Under 'History', choose the drop down 'Use custom settings for history'. Under 'Accept cookies from sites', uncheck 'Accept third-party cookies', and right below select 'Keep until I close Firefox':

Great! No more unwanted tracking cookies.

Step 3: Turn Off Referers

This famously misspelled header typically sent by default with every HTTP request gives a lot of potentially personal information to websites. But you can turn it off. Open a new tab and in your URL bar, type 'about:config'. You will see a scary warning; click 'I'll be careful, I promise!' At the search bar, type 'referer'. You should see the value 'network.http.sendRefererHeader'. Double click it, and change the value to 0:

Ta da! No more referers. Now close that tab if you are worried about accidentally changing other settings.

Step 4: Install HTTPS Everywhere

Install EFF's browser add-on HTTPS Everywhere. This maximizes your use of HTTPS to ensure that your private conversations with websites can't be snooped on or tampered with by other parties.

Congratulations! You are now in an elite group of users fighting back against unwanted privacy invasions. Give yourself a pat on the back, and then please share these tips.

Step 1: Install Adblock Plus

Get Adblock Plus. After it is installed, be sure to change your filter preferences to add EasyPrivacy. To do this, first visit the AdBlock Plus website. Click on the link to 'Add EasyPrivacy to Adblock Plus':

This should take you to the Adblock Plus options screen. Simply click add and you're all set:


Does Deleting Cookies Protect Privacy

Step 2: Change Cookie Settings

Now you are going to set your cookies to expire when you exit your browser, and disallow third-party cookies from being set. To do this, locate the Chrome settings menu, which should one of the following two icons in the top right of your browser:

From this menu, go to 'Settings', and scroll to the bottom and click 'Show Advanced Settings.' Under 'Privacy', click 'Content Settings'. Select 'Keep local data only until I quit my browser / for current session', and check 'Block third-party cookies and site data':

Great! No more unwanted tracking cookies.

Step 3: Turn Off Referers

This famously misspelled header typically sent by default with every HTTP request gives a lot of potentially personal information to websites. But you can turn it off. To do so, install the extension Referer Control . After installing, scroll down and locate the text 'default referer for all other sites' and click 'Block':

Ta da! No more referers.

Step 4: Install HTTPS Everywhere

Install EFF's browser add-on HTTPS Everywhere. This maximizes your use of HTTPS to ensure that your private conversations with websites can't be snooped on or tampered with by other parties.

Congratulations! You are now in an elite group of users fighting back against unwanted privacy invasions. Give yourself a pat on the back, and then please share these tips.