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Something I noticed on a few websites, including stackoverflow, is that they leave tracking settings up to a different website, which still lets that external party know what websites a user has been seeing, and this can be maliciously abused.
I realize this might have been mentioned before, but I didn't see any similar posts in a quick search.
Naturally, I have both these "cookie" sites denied access.
I also felt that I should mention that any external asset domains can also see this traffic, too, but those typically aren't used with tracking - or the opposite thereof - in mind.
How do you, personally, block cookies? Like, manually or with an extension or..? Do all your devices have the block?
I run a pihole, but I think cookies work very differently than ad dns. I don’t really understand the various components of the internet, tbh.
I use browser extensions that - from what I'm understanding - remove any external script references, or at least prevent the script from loading, but I'll admit, the pihole method is what I've been drooling over for a while now, but haven't arranged yet. Also, it's probably more trustable than a browser extension, ironically. 😅
Do you mean for cookie control? I don’t think pihole can do that (and some basic searches seem to agree), but again idk how the whole thing works..
It’s easy af to set up for adblocking though. I’m not super tech savvy and it took like an hour, start to finish, including time to track down a USB.
No, just for preventing (I guess you could call it sanitizing with the web as it is now) shady traffic that might happen in the background. It's unfortunate that phones don't have a higher control on authorisation for apps to selectively block user specified IP or web addresses.
Heh, I guess adblocking IS sanitizing your internet access
Ah, gotcha, yeah I use my pihole rather manually to block things I don’t recognize. It’s kinda fun to see what breaks (usually fucking nothing, surprise surprise).
So like I get an ad on a page, nope, go into pihole and block literally anything from that device in tht time range which I don’t recognize as the url I wanted or some necessary component, reload and see what happens.
I’ve broken a few games and pages doing that, but it’s easy enough to walk back, just reload the thing and you get a new query to unblock.
But it’s nice for preventing my tv from reporting on my behavior (I like the apps, not the shady data collection or ads), shady sites as you say, and with a basic vpn, golden on mobile too.
It’s a shame it doesn’t handle cookies tho. I’m on ghostery dawn browser which takes that stuff as a top priority (dawn hasn’t been updated in a year so I’m using it cautiously for link handling only, with ghost tabs as the default so my activity and trackers clear when I close the browser) but I’d prefer a single solution for everything network wide..
Yeah what you've described using your pihole sounds like a dream set-up. I honestly think that is the most powerful shield any home can have against data-mining apps, operating systems (looking at you, windows), websites, and even some physical devices (internet of things).
Cookie tracking is something that - now that I think about it - I'm not too familiar with in terms of the original intended site tracking it, but if it's external sites, then yeah just blocking said external site from ever being loaded or script therefrom run should be good enough.