Identity can be fakes with fake browser history. What's the point in inventing all these AI chat bots, if you don't use them to pollute the tracking histories and bring back privacy?
Eh that's a bit defeatist for me. Each time this is brought up is a good time to introduce that it doesn't have to be this way. But mainly the frustration stims from the engineering perspective of having such a poorly designed Internet infrastructure.
Yes we would have the same zero privacy however we can induce so much noise in our privacy tracking data that it become worthless to the companies and unsellable. Even worse it would cost them a lot of bandwidth ans storage space to store the worthless data.
The ultimate payback, it cost them more than it is worth the data to collect.
Can you add in an option for really depraved content so that "dwarf fart porn" doesn't look like it sticks out? Love the idea though. From a marketing standpoint, if everyone used this their search history would be worthless to the ISPs.
How would this script hide the actual real connections you do make with your browser? I may be missing something but it seems this script will only obsfucate connections.
You can make this truly robust but you'd need to make it more organic - cycling through a series of websites, and especially just the root page is not ideal.
What might be best is to start a search and have links returned then navigated and thus having a flow. This concept has a lot of potential but needs more logic involved.
I agree with this, I think the best approach is crowd-sourced and dynamic list.
It's not enough to just use the top 100 sites on Alexa, this would also have the negative effect of cumulatively artificially increasing the popularity of those sites.
I think additionally it needs to have everyone using the system anonymously share their true web queries, perhaps with a torrent or blockchain like system, and all of these would be added and used as part of the white noise.
Thus, the more people that use it, the more diverse and less useful the data would become.
As a linux user, I think it would be just as useful to randomly select words from the built-in dictionary, or man pages, and run a script with browser identification just like the one you use the most.
Or you could write a script for your browser, which selects random links from a web page. The downside of this idea is you'll probably end up on a porn site before the script iterates 6 times.
All of the major search engines I just checked show your search query in the URL of the search results page. You ISP can’t see the contents of the page, but it can see the URL. The search engine query forms use the GET method to submit your query. The GET method doesn’t hide the data you are submitting.
won't they be interested in certain sites and who visited those sites rather than analyzing individual browsing habits? THen drill down to further levels on what other sites this subset frequent? Then from there they use their hacking tools to spy on individuals with a certain online profile
A concept like content farms beats profiling like this
Working people only log in to the PC at certain times. During lunch break, after they come home......
Increase or decrease Internet usage depending on the time, weekend, day time, holiday..... Just pretend that it is a real human.
Males could surf for porn when the wife has gone to bed.
Avoid "Trump" keywords if you want to hide the fact that you are a Trump supported, increase your search on "Hillary"
Randomizing mechanism so when 100 people use your profile, it does not show up as a spike in the analysis tools by the government.
More important don't use an app, but create scripts that can be copied and pasted by people without having to download source code. Everybody can have Python, and is harder to track a script.
Even better would be distribute the scripts through message boards so there is no single point of entry that can be tracked. If you have it on github then the government can look who downloaded it.
This is the best strategy I have seen for diluting the value of your data to advertisers. Maybe not this script exactly, but this idea. Your search information and internet history have been for sale for 15+ years, so this bill changes absolutely nothing. The only option is to fill your search and history with garbage that obfuscates any real trends. The software that analyzes your data isn't smart enough to filter the fake traffic from the real. True privacy is nearly impossible unless you are willing to give up the internet entirely.
First there was fake news, now there is fake browser history. LOL
The interesting idea is to generate fake Internet history that pretends that you are a choir boy that goes to church every Sunday and live at your mums basement while in reality.....
EDIT: we also need to generate fake Siri/Cortana requests.
The ISP isn''t going to be looking at actual browser history, that's just what some stupid reporter that doesn't know any better wrote. They will be selling the http requests and trafffic logs they have from our individual router IP's. What we need is a background app that fills up idle computer time by sending out garbage requests. No need for a browser, no need for 'Top 500' anything, they can be randomly generated addresses that don't go anywhere, as long as it is logged by the ISP. An http spam generator, if you will. Flood their log files with white noise that makes trying to track actual website hits not worth the money it costs to analyze. We need to make our 'browsing history' a worthless commodity.
69 comments
16 u/HarveyKlinger 30 Mar 2017 13:30
Please explain what this "new" bill does vs. what conditions you're living under now.
psssssst... I'll give you a hint. After the bill is passed you will enjoy the exact same privacy you have today.
11 u/JohnJones 30 Mar 2017 13:35
next to ZERO online privacy
3 u/HarveyKlinger 30 Mar 2017 13:53
exactly
1 u/roznak 30 Mar 2017 21:08
Identity can be fakes with fake browser history. What's the point in inventing all these AI chat bots, if you don't use them to pollute the tracking histories and bring back privacy?
0 u/rspix000 30 Mar 2017 14:57
Hey, Harvey says those corps wasted all the money they donated to those politicians for this bill. S/h/it says for us to move on, nothing to see here.
9 u/Picard 30 Mar 2017 15:10
Eh that's a bit defeatist for me. Each time this is brought up is a good time to introduce that it doesn't have to be this way. But mainly the frustration stims from the engineering perspective of having such a poorly designed Internet infrastructure.
0 u/roznak 30 Mar 2017 20:07
Yes we would have the same zero privacy however we can induce so much noise in our privacy tracking data that it become worthless to the companies and unsellable. Even worse it would cost them a lot of bandwidth ans storage space to store the worthless data.
The ultimate payback, it cost them more than it is worth the data to collect.
10 u/CuntReckTheRecord 30 Mar 2017 13:39
Does it add history far worse than what I normally browse?! haha
8 u/damnonions 30 Mar 2017 15:08
Can you add in an option for really depraved content so that "dwarf fart porn" doesn't look like it sticks out? Love the idea though. From a marketing standpoint, if everyone used this their search history would be worthless to the ISPs.
6 u/conestoga_dragon 30 Mar 2017 13:05
How would this script hide the actual real connections you do make with your browser? I may be missing something but it seems this script will only obsfucate connections.
edit - I commend you on taking action!
6 u/LostandFound 30 Mar 2017 14:04
YAY I have been asking about something like this for ages. We control the quality of their product, its time to make shit of it.
6 u/PuttItOut 30 Mar 2017 18:04
You can make this truly robust but you'd need to make it more organic - cycling through a series of websites, and especially just the root page is not ideal.
What might be best is to start a search and have links returned then navigated and thus having a flow. This concept has a lot of potential but needs more logic involved.
1 u/NoRagrets 30 Mar 2017 22:36
I agree with this, I think the best approach is crowd-sourced and dynamic list.
It's not enough to just use the top 100 sites on Alexa, this would also have the negative effect of cumulatively artificially increasing the popularity of those sites.
I think additionally it needs to have everyone using the system anonymously share their true web queries, perhaps with a torrent or blockchain like system, and all of these would be added and used as part of the white noise.
Thus, the more people that use it, the more diverse and less useful the data would become.
4 u/pyres 30 Mar 2017 15:01
As a linux user, I think it would be just as useful to randomly select words from the built-in dictionary, or man pages, and run a script with browser identification just like the one you use the most.
Or you could write a script for your browser, which selects random links from a web page. The downside of this idea is you'll probably end up on a porn site before the script iterates 6 times.
3 u/OhBlindOne 30 Mar 2017 15:04
I like the idea, but doesn't TrackMeNot achieve the same goal?
2 u/Al_Rubyx 30 Mar 2017 14:55
Great idea. Sadly my data is capped at 1TB at home so I don't think it's the best idea for me to run. Sad, cuz I look at some fucked up shit.
2 u/Galvanized_Dreamer 30 Mar 2017 15:32
I watch Youtube videos in 720p 4-6 hours a day and only use about 250 GB per month. 600GB cap, no problems. You should be fine, I think.
0 u/NoRagrets 30 Mar 2017 22:44
1TB? Are you Google.com? Are you Archive.org?
1TB is hardly a cap.
0 u/Kael_thas_Sunstrider 31 Mar 2017 10:40
Capped? This is 2017, not 1998?
2 u/OneMnstr 30 Mar 2017 16:44
Ended up at sedoparking.com, which is in the "malvertising filter list by Disconnect".
2 u/11011000111001 30 Mar 2017 17:49
This is great, how can I add my own websites to the list? I want to add as much as possible. Also...
I created a script that can be added to startup if anyone is interested.
START "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\RuinMyHistory\RuinMyHistory.url"
1 u/bikergang_accountant 30 Mar 2017 14:13
That doesn't even make sense. Your searches are done under https. Your ISP doesn't even have access to your searches.
3 u/DinoRider 30 Mar 2017 16:30
All of the major search engines I just checked show your search query in the URL of the search results page. You ISP can’t see the contents of the page, but it can see the URL. The search engine query forms use the GET method to submit your query. The GET method doesn’t hide the data you are submitting.
1 u/OhBlindOne 30 Mar 2017 17:41
Here's an idea for your project, make a browser extension that will execute these bursts in the background, so a tab doesn't need to be open.
1 u/Kael_thas_Sunstrider 30 Mar 2017 18:16
How does that work on github, that I can't see the source(I can inspect source or wget it but whatever)
0 u/NoRagrets 30 Mar 2017 22:45
The master branch is empty, switch to the gh-pages branch.
0 u/Kael_thas_Sunstrider 31 Mar 2017 11:07
just found that, thanks ;))
1 u/maltespier 30 Mar 2017 18:40
won't they be interested in certain sites and who visited those sites rather than analyzing individual browsing habits? THen drill down to further levels on what other sites this subset frequent? Then from there they use their hacking tools to spy on individuals with a certain online profile
A concept like content farms beats profiling like this
1 u/roznak 30 Mar 2017 21:19
You need to extend to add profiles and timings.
More important don't use an app, but create scripts that can be copied and pasted by people without having to download source code. Everybody can have Python, and is harder to track a script. Even better would be distribute the scripts through message boards so there is no single point of entry that can be tracked. If you have it on github then the government can look who downloaded it.
0 u/Fyrix 30 Mar 2017 18:54
This is the best strategy I have seen for diluting the value of your data to advertisers. Maybe not this script exactly, but this idea. Your search information and internet history have been for sale for 15+ years, so this bill changes absolutely nothing. The only option is to fill your search and history with garbage that obfuscates any real trends. The software that analyzes your data isn't smart enough to filter the fake traffic from the real. True privacy is nearly impossible unless you are willing to give up the internet entirely.
0 u/roznak 30 Mar 2017 20:17
First there was fake news, now there is fake browser history. LOL
The interesting idea is to generate fake Internet history that pretends that you are a choir boy that goes to church every Sunday and live at your mums basement while in reality.....
EDIT: we also need to generate fake Siri/Cortana requests.
0 u/Looking4hope 31 Mar 2017 05:30
Great idea! Good job :)
0 u/saintPirelli 31 Mar 2017 06:54
I swear i have seen something similar before, just can't recall where...
0 u/DoomMantia 31 Mar 2017 06:58
The fact that we're all in this website instead of using Tor and .onion sites means we don't really care about privacy. We're just virtue signalling.
0 u/Kael_thas_Sunstrider 31 Mar 2017 10:43
What if you are connect to voat through tor?
0 u/thelastcoldwarrior 31 Mar 2017 13:07
The ISP isn''t going to be looking at actual browser history, that's just what some stupid reporter that doesn't know any better wrote. They will be selling the http requests and trafffic logs they have from our individual router IP's. What we need is a background app that fills up idle computer time by sending out garbage requests. No need for a browser, no need for 'Top 500' anything, they can be randomly generated addresses that don't go anywhere, as long as it is logged by the ISP. An http spam generator, if you will. Flood their log files with white noise that makes trying to track actual website hits not worth the money it costs to analyze. We need to make our 'browsing history' a worthless commodity.