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Is it possible that I am being tracked online?

R

romanof

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 13, 2020
371
390
Texas
</sarcasm> of course. But... I usually run Firefox with Ghostery as my only blocker, although I have everything that I can prove is attached to Google blocked in my host file. Ghostery and FireFox blocking is turned off on legitimate places that I visit, usually programming sites - boring stuff to the general public and not exactly venues that have millions of visitors a day, and thus not a real fertile ground for spam.

But, I posted a comment on this forum about the recent grandiose excitement of a certain CEO to the color purple in a new product. Suddenly, everywhere I go to look at general news, I get ads in the sidebars for... Purple. Purple pillows, blankets, taffy, coffee cups, T-shirts... You name it.

Ok, so a bunch of coincidences, or... do I need to go back to XP? Or even to Dos 3.3? Heck, I even have my old IMSAII 8080 somewhere. That could safely surf - if websites will accept a dialup connection at 1200 baud.

(Old Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times.")
 
Yep, I use the Duck-man, also. My post was just a wonder at the strange "coincidences" rather than any actual worry. Really odd, though. Had it been any other word I probably wouldn't have noticed.
 
You are most likely being tracked on this site too, my Safari advises that it has blocked 3 trackers, one of course being google.
 
tranceking26 said:
You are most likely being tracked on this site too, my Safari advises that it has blocked 3 trackers, one of course being google.
Click to expand...
You might find this interesting. (With taking some of the exaggerated context out of the OP’s opening post.) I’m using Ad Guard and my work network proto to block any tracking.

forums.macrumors.com

MacRumors, I'm disappointed...

Out of all the sites I browse, MacRumors is the absolute worst when it comes to trackers! Even political and porn sites don't compete!
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
Heck, companies are collecting stuff on us with Smart TVs, Alexa, even children's toys that have audio are recording things said and using that to track you. You can't hide.
 
Yes, Big Brother is watching you.

Don't waste your time with the movie, read the book, if you haven't already. You should know which book I'm talking about, but if you don't......just Google it ;-)
 
chown33 said:
You should probably treat anything that shows ads as running trackers. Pretty much every ad network has them.

As for the purple thing, it's most likely just a coincidence.
Click to expand...

Or it could just reflect the fact that algorithms related to "trending searches" run amok chasing their own tails sometimes.

Q. Oooh look how many people are talking about the color purple, wasn't that a book or something?​
​
A. Nah, just people reminding other people that back in 1998 there were jellybean-colored iMacs out and about... and folk arguing over whether it was decent for computers to show off their innards or we should keep that window closed and go back to beige boxes lest our children become engineers instead of accountants.​
 
LizKat said:
Or it could just reflect the fact that algorithms related to "trending searches" run amok chasing their own tails sometimes.

Q. Oooh look how many people are talking about the color purple, wasn't that a book or something?​
​
A. Nah, just people reminding other people that back in 1998 there were jellybean-colored iMacs out and about... and folk arguing over whether it was decent for computers to show off their innards or we should keep that window closed and go back to beige boxes lest our children become engineers instead of accountants.​
Click to expand...
I'm looking over at my fellow bean counter...
tumblr_odo762zqwY1qmob6ro1_400.gifv

🤨🤭
 
  • Haha
Reactions: LizKat
Mousse said:
I'm looking over at my fellow bean counter...
tumblr_odo762zqwY1qmob6ro1_400.gifv

🤨🤭
Click to expand...

No offense intended, just a a vote for diversity in computer designs including the cosmetic aspects. In my own defense I majored in economics and suffered through enough pre-computer-era accounting (and statistics) to realize that even a beige box is a step up from a Marchant 12x12 calculator...

Still when those iMacs came out in 1998 i remember snagging an orange one for the kids of a sibling, despite the fact I was still appreciating the benefits of a beige box on my desk at work.

EDIT: maybe ya could get me for dragging this thread off topic instead LOL. My apologies for that too.
 
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One of my best friends works for an Alphabet agency here in America. In the same office as Edward Snowden worked in as a matter of fact.

Me as a extremely privacy minded person cannot resist asking him hypothetical questions about how deep things go. I try to never really overstep, and put him on the spot, but over the years I have gleaned a decent picture of where we are at now.

Pretty much what I have ascertained from our conversations is that there is some good news. Basically there isn't an all seeing eye proactively tracking (US citizens) in their daily lives. They are actually down on manpower to even look at the people they need to keep an eye on, let alone people doing semi-nefarious things online.

If you are doing piracy, other petty things, or have some antisocial interests you can actually rest a bit easier than what you may think.

However what I have also gotten out of him, that is disconcerting is that there is no hiding if they have their eye on you. Tor, Tails, VPN, proxies, are basically no match for what they can see. Let alone blocking ad trackers, or other bush league privacy measures.

From what I understood from the carefully coded language he told me, essentially short of paying cash for a second hand, brand new device that had never been registered to you, and war driving (using open wifi not tied to you in any way) there is no such thing as privacy online. No step you can take will obsfuscate your device ID from them, and they can see anything you do, no matter what steps you take.

What is also scary about this notion is that they also do not forget, you leave a trail everytime you go online that is backed up for a longer period of time than you may think. So if someone down the road wanted to see who had read this comment, that information is being compiled somewhere, and could potentially be used against you.

Another really interesting nugget I got him to divulge is that they have pivoted away from having much of any proprietary software for keeping tabs on the population. Most of whatever data they use in their investigation is not stolen, or subpoenad. It is simply purchased from the tech companies, and we all agreed to let them have it in the terms of service to access these devices, or to get internet from our ISPs.

Basically the TL/DR is if you want privacy switch back to a land line. However unless you are a large scale hacker, a terrorist, or a pedophile, you probably have less to worry about than you may think.
 
Yet people still bitch they are to cheap to buy a Mac mini and join the Apple Developers level and port your code then you are fly by night person! So take this as learning cookies have been tracking you sense the beginning of the Internet! Even MacRumors use cookie to log into that chat forum and once you leave track you whoever you go on Internet to sell adds, etc!
 
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