Private browsing

[viking60]

There is an absolute need to protect your privacy when browsing. Google have changed their terms - and basically they make a living out of selling info about you.

Most people don't care, but they should. People are getting fined by their faces having been recognized with facial recognition when passing those infamous photo boxes while speeding.

There will always be people that find anonymity suspect - and they are mostly sitting on the surveying end. In Norway the police catch you for speeding with Facebook (The licence plate is not enough - they have to identify the driver. Facial recognition comes in real handy).
The police also warn their people not to enter facebook because it is a security risk.
So they love it when it is for spying on others - and they hate it when they are spied upon.
One small bit that you can do to protect some privacy is to surf privately. This takes care of not saving all your traces on your end. But remember there are other ends (for that you need a proxy like http://hidemyass.com)!

Here are the switches you can use to start your browser with private surfing.
chrome: --incognito
Firefox: -private
IE: -private
Opera: -newprivatetab (EDIT: Opera has been taken over by Google - since then you have to pick the private tab from the menu or use CTRL+Shift-N)

Opera has the ability to surf privately in a tab so it will open a new private tab for you.

Just add it to the launcher in your menu and it is taken care of. You can use a program like alacarte for editing:

In KDE you can use kmenuedit.
On Windows, just find the shortcut for your browser and right-click it. When the properties window appears, click the shortcut tab (shown belove). The target box currently shows the command to run your browser -- to add a switch, click after the .exe and type [space] and then your switch text.

Remember: Privacy is a Human Right!
Here are some examples of perfect surfing:
Go to a terminal or hit ALT+ F2 and write:

Code: Select all

iron  --incognito http://bjoernvold.com/forum

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opera -newprivatetab http://bjoernvold.com/forum

This will open this forum in a private session in iron(chrome) or opera.
To be really safe on all ends you could enter this command:

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opera -newprivatetab http://hidemyass.com

It will not save anything on your box and hide your IP in cyberspace.

[rolf]

This seems important but I enjoy some of the benefits of "cookies". Such as, remembering a shopping cart contents, for example. Does private browsing block all cookies?

[viking60]

Yup they will be gone after you are finished browsing.It will not remember your password and userid in this forum either.
So it could be a good idea to make a launcher/link to one instance of say Chrome -for private surfing. In Opera you can shop in another tab and jump to the private tab for private surfing.

[rolf]

Seems doable. I wonder if the Firefox switch works for Seamonkey, which is nearly wholly Firefox code, iiuc.

[viking60]

It should but I had a quick try and could not tell if it worked.

[rolf]

I started seamonkey with

seamonkey -private

went to newegg.com, where I was not recognized, was being asked to log in, then put an item in my cart.
I shut down seamonkey and re-started it in normal fashion. When I went to newegg.com, the item was still in my cart, so this is not as expected, if the switch were working.

[viking60]

Confirmed - it does not work. I checked with the login here.

[rolf]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=460895

Looks like it is a low-priority long time feature request for the Seamonkey volunteer developers.

[viking60]

This seems important but I enjoy some of the benefits of "cookies". Such as, remembering a shopping cart contents, for example. Does private browsing block all cookies?

I have found a way to enjoy the benefits without the risk (kind of a condom) If you add abine it will handle your data instead of the cookies.
It gives you an overview over what is happening and the possibility to change the settings. You can add accounts or just navigate to the site and log in and abine will ask you if you want it to handle the account.
That should then work without the cookies.

[rolf]

Do Not Track Plus 2.0.6 May be incompatible with Firefox 2.7.2; Not available for Firefox 2.7.2

Well, I am running Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120216 Firefox/10.0.2 SeaMonkey/2.7.2 which is the built-in string, crafted to help stupid websites display when only 'Firefox' is understood, iiuc. The Do Not Track Plus add-on from albine refuses to install. I already have 'add-on compatibility checking' disabled but it is not helping for this. The demo seems like it might be a handy add-on. The License Agreement is brief, a good thing! I have read where part of unwilling plugins can be edited to override the browser/version check but, maybe later.

Good heads-up, nonetheless!

[rolf]

After seeing the opinions in a thread at broadband reports: Do Not Track Plus vs Ghostery, I installed the plugin It seems very thorough, although I have no idea what are the ins and outs of this sort of agent.

[viking60]

You can right-click on the findings and block them there. Like Google analytics etc. It is good I use it in addition to other privacy plugins. This little fellow will tell you who is gathering information about you.
Together with Abine you will feel that you are in control again:

Apple

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