Tag: COOKIES

All three major browser providers have now publicized their solution to the FTC's Do Not Track problem. Google has waded in with a thoroughly brute-force extension that was probably programmed in a few hours, and Mozilla has a much softer, "meta" HTTP approach up its sleeve. Microsoft seems to be somewhere in the middle, with a built-in solution that may prove to be the best of both worlds. ...

You may remember a Chrome extension that popped up back in October called Facebook Disconnect, written by a Google engineer named Brian Kennish. Well, he's now parted ways with the big G, and he's got a new extension -- simply called Disconnect. This time around, Kennish isn't just targeting Facebook, but all major collectors of personal browsing data -- like Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, and ...

The FTC wants to fight cookies with cookies in their "do not track" scheme, but the folks at Microsoft have some ideas of their own. Today, they unveiled a new privacy measure for Internet Explorer 9 called Tracking Protection. Microsoft believes Tracking Protection will "enable consumers to control what third-party site content can track them when they're online." The feature will work in ...

The Federal Trade Commission issued a report yesterday outlining what it feels must be done to ensure the privacy of the average netizen. Key points of the initiative include making consumers much more aware of what they're agreeing to when it comes to their privacy, and instituting a "Do Not Track" scheme that could use cookies to ward off other cookies. The first thing they want to change is ...

Earlier this week, a login-cookie-snooping Firefox plug-in called Firesheep rocked the Internet by letting anyone compromise your Facebook or Twitter account over a wireless network. Alarmed at Firesheep's 200,000 downloads, an Icelandic engineering student named Gunnar Sigurdsson created FireShepherd, a program that crashes Firesheep with floods of nonsense packets. Although Firesheep was ...

Limping and dripping from the maws of incorrigible security bod Samy Kamkar comes evercookie. As the name suggests, deleting an evercookie isn't easy -- in fact, once you've taken a nibble, that's it: you can't delete it. Of course, no benevolent person would ever use evercookie -- you'd have to be a nefarious money-grabbing megalomaniac! -- but the sheer number of clever hacks, cheap tricks ...

Those of you running Google Chrome's half-stable, half-dev-channel beta version now have access to two features which cropped up a while back on the developer and Chromium nightly builds. Auto-translate has landed in Google Chrome Beta 4.1 for Windows, as has the improved content control panel in Chrome's wrench menu. If you're a grizzled Firefox vet and have been missing NoScript (or you've ...

There have been more than a few blog posts lately talking about how websites can use Flash cookies to keep tabs on you even if you're visiting their site using your browser's private browsing mode. It would appear, however, that the crew at Adobe thinks this is something which should change. According to a post on NeoWin, Adobe is working to make sure that Flash 10.1 will play nice with the ...

If there was ever a sign that tech companies are often run by mad-hatter evangelists, this is it: Eric Schmidt, Google's illustrious and incredibly successful CEO has finally spoken out about our continued concerns of privacy. And he isn't being gentle about it either. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt said in ...

After surfing the web day in and day out, you've probably piled up a lot of advertising cookies. A lot of major ad providers, like Google, for example, save cookies and track browsing activity to provide better ad targeting. Unless you know that you can opt out of this stuff, you don't have much of a choice about this stuff. Privacychoice has collected the opt-out features of a lot of major ...

You know the federal Do Not Call registry that lets US telephone customers sign up for a list to avoid telemarketers? Two consumer advocacy groups are asking the Federal Trade Commission to basically create the same kind of registry -- for the internet. Now, let's pretend that a US agency could regulate the way that internet companies track your data for advertising and other purposes. How ...

If more than one person uses your home computer, odds are you're constantly logging in and out of your Gmail, Flickr, YouTube, and other online accounts. Sure, you could set up separate profiles for each person who uses your operating system, but who wants to take the time to switch user logins just to check their email? That's where CookieSwap comes in. This lightweight Firefox extension lets you ...

Look, we're as happy as anyone that Facebook has figured out how to start making money through advertising. But we're also as freaked out as anyone that one way the company will do this is by tracking your web surfing behavior and add it to your profile. Fortunately Nate Weiner figured out an extraordinarily simple solution (for Firefox users). Just install the BlockSite Firefox add-on and block ...

AOL has announced plans to let users opt out of targeted advertising. Right now AOL (which happens to be this blog's parent company) and many other web sites place cookies in your browser allowing the site to serve up targeted ads every time you visit an AOL web site. By the end of the year, AOL plans to offer you the ability to opt out of targeted advertising. You'll still see advertising, but ...

The beloved, and sometimes hated, browser cookie has been entered into evidence in a Texas court. A Texas man actually used the cookies on his computer as a trail of time stamped data of his web activities to try and prove his innocence and where he was at the time prosecutors say he was somewhere else. Mr. Texas had a court restraining order in place from his ex-wife, and Mrs. Ex-Texas claimed to ...