The evolution of the Internet hasn't been too impressive lately as there's been an enormous drive to make Web sites as egregiously annoying as possible with pop-ups, pop-downs, pop-overs, etc everywhere and, I anticipate, gratuitous flatulence will be coming soon.
The other aspect that people hate is tracking and there is one easy partial solution for it: Ghostery (free download, etc)
Ghostery is software that will post a small window to the top-right corner of your screen to list everything that is trying to track you on visiting a Web site. You then have the option to disable them, whitelist the site, or whatever combination you like. Note: disabling them will sometimes cause the Web site to stop functioning as these trackers are moneymakers.
Don't expect this to have any effect on the NSA as they track in many ways but all they really want is bank information and / or anything they can use for political blackmail. Recall the FBI put a bug in Martin Luther King's bedroom. The governmental objectives are likely just as stupid now as they were then as you still have pigdog perverts like J. Edgar Hoover only now he's General Keith Alexander.
In my view, Facebook and the like are considerably more dangerous as people give up information a whole lot more casually. It's not just primary Facebook but also the games have access to your cellphone number, assuming you're stupid enough to put it online, which they in turn can sell to other venues or whatever. You can remind Barbie the Cute Little Huggle Muffin that her cellphone number is being taken for who knows what purpose but she goes off to play Candy Crush Saga anyway.
Facebook is one of the worst of the trackers and you will see that in what is revealed by Ghostery (e.g. look for Facebook Connect). The software is easy to install and easy to use. You can go through all the names of trackers (i.e. hundreds) and disable them up-front or you can let Ghostery find them when you visit Web sites and turn them off at will. I find the latter convenient as I didn't want to deal with blinding lists of tracker names.
Note: Ghostery is free as a public service. People ask what you can do to fight back against all this snooping, tracking, and generic Internet perversion. Well, the author of Ghostery did something about it and charges nothing for it. The software was originally written by David Cancel and was acquired by Evidon in 2010.
As to why bother. It's not so much that people are watching to see if I go to Russia Today or whatever but rather the trackers take my computer time. The more trackers there are, the more of my computer power is wasted. Laptops don't have power to waste so I will resist and will have some of that compute power back, thank you.
The other aspect that people hate is tracking and there is one easy partial solution for it: Ghostery (free download, etc)
Ghostery is software that will post a small window to the top-right corner of your screen to list everything that is trying to track you on visiting a Web site. You then have the option to disable them, whitelist the site, or whatever combination you like. Note: disabling them will sometimes cause the Web site to stop functioning as these trackers are moneymakers.
Don't expect this to have any effect on the NSA as they track in many ways but all they really want is bank information and / or anything they can use for political blackmail. Recall the FBI put a bug in Martin Luther King's bedroom. The governmental objectives are likely just as stupid now as they were then as you still have pigdog perverts like J. Edgar Hoover only now he's General Keith Alexander.
In my view, Facebook and the like are considerably more dangerous as people give up information a whole lot more casually. It's not just primary Facebook but also the games have access to your cellphone number, assuming you're stupid enough to put it online, which they in turn can sell to other venues or whatever. You can remind Barbie the Cute Little Huggle Muffin that her cellphone number is being taken for who knows what purpose but she goes off to play Candy Crush Saga anyway.
Facebook is one of the worst of the trackers and you will see that in what is revealed by Ghostery (e.g. look for Facebook Connect). The software is easy to install and easy to use. You can go through all the names of trackers (i.e. hundreds) and disable them up-front or you can let Ghostery find them when you visit Web sites and turn them off at will. I find the latter convenient as I didn't want to deal with blinding lists of tracker names.
Note: Ghostery is free as a public service. People ask what you can do to fight back against all this snooping, tracking, and generic Internet perversion. Well, the author of Ghostery did something about it and charges nothing for it. The software was originally written by David Cancel and was acquired by Evidon in 2010.
As to why bother. It's not so much that people are watching to see if I go to Russia Today or whatever but rather the trackers take my computer time. The more trackers there are, the more of my computer power is wasted. Laptops don't have power to waste so I will resist and will have some of that compute power back, thank you.
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