protecting your online privacy
DESCRIPTION
Everybody wants to track you and nobody wants to get tracked! Who tracks you online? How is tracking done? Why are you being tracked and how that data is used? What are some steps you can take to prevent tracking and protect your online privacy.TRANSCRIPT
Protecting Your Online Privacy Everybody Wants To Track You &Nobody Wants To Get Tracked!
Saturday, November 9, 13
Privacy
Privacy is an individual’s right to control the collection, use and disclosure of
personal information
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Who Tracks You Online?
• Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
• Analytics Tools
• Ad serving companies
• Location based apps & services (run keeper, starbucks, yelp, groupon)
• ISPs, CDNs, Data brokers
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Saturday, November 9, 13
Why are you being tracked?
• Advertising is the backbone of many big internet services
• Providing you a better user experience
• Cheap and fast processing power and storage (Big Data!)
• Security & National Intelligence
• Spam, identity theft etc
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How is tracking done?
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Social Buttons
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HTTP Cookies & Flash Cookies
First Party Cookies
vs
Third Party Cookies
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Ever-cookies (aka Zombie Cookies)
Ad Tags & Pixels
iFrames
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How is this data used?
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Relevant Search Results - Good!
IP spoofed with a proxy
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Recommendations - Good!
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Info based on user action - Good!
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Excessive Ad Retargeting - Bad!
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Identity Theft, Selling data - Ugly!
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How Unique Are You ?
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How Unique Are You ?
33 Bits
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How Unique Are You ?
33 Bits
There are only 6.6 billion people in the world, so you only need 33 bits (more precisely, 32.6 bits) of information about a person to determine who they are.
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How Unique Are You ?
33 Bits
There are only 6.6 billion people in the world, so you only need 33 bits (more precisely, 32.6 bits) of information about a person to determine who they are.
- Arvind Narayanan, Princeton, http://33bits.org
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https://panopticlick.eff.org/Saturday, November 9, 13
How many trackers?
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What can YOU do?
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BUT...
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Really... What can YOU do?
Know and decide what you want to expose and what you don’t want to.
Choose the corresponding action.
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Some Common Methods
• The basic one - think for a second before you post something on the internet!
• Disable Javascript (Too aggressive!)
• Disable Third-Party cookies (Default on Safari. Firefox is trying to).
• Check Android App Permissions before you install.
• Use incognito mode.
• Use DuckDuckGo
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Browser Extensions
Ghosteryghostery.com
Disconnectdisconnect.me
ShareMeNotsharemenot.cs.washington.
edu/
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Thank You!Questions?
@ramanujam
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