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Geek Culture / Drastic My Paranoia

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nonZero
13
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Joined: 10th Jul 2011
Location: Dark Empire HQ, Otherworld, Silent Hill
Posted: 18th Nov 2012 21:59 Edited at: 18th Nov 2012 22:00
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Don't know how many here are still using Firefox (all the cool kids drink and use Chrome) but for those who do, there's an interesting plugin called Collusion. It's a tracker of trackers. It's not perfect and still in development but the general idea is to give you a visual idea of how websites can interact with data they have on you and potentially share this info. To give you an example, I used a sterile session and visited only thegamecreators.com and this is what Collusion came up with:

The dots represent other sites and the lines indicate how they link together. See the key on the map for more.

Wanna have fun? Just look it up and install it in your plugins manager in firefox, visit a few major websites and then click the Collusion icon in the bottom right (below the scroll-bar). This is meant as purely educational btw, I'm not trying to start a tinfoil hat trend.

RP Functions Library v1.0

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Phaelax
DBPro Master
22
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 19th Nov 2012 01:00
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So is it saying that because you came here, FB has gained info or is it TGC has gained your info from FB?

It's an interesting tool, I'll have to check it out.

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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Ortu
DBPro Master
17
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Joined: 21st Nov 2007
Location: Austin, TX
Posted: 19th Nov 2012 04:38
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I would say it has detected that tgc has links going out to Facebook, I see lines but no arrows indicating data sent

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Le Shorte
16
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Joined: 6th Apr 2009
Location: Wisconsin
Posted: 19th Nov 2012 04:55
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Still use Firefox. Never liked Chrome.

I'll check this out, definitely.

Cheesehead for life.
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nonZero
13
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Joined: 10th Jul 2011
Location: Dark Empire HQ, Otherworld, Silent Hill
Posted: 19th Nov 2012 10:44 Edited at: 19th Nov 2012 10:47
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@Phaelax:
Potentially, yes. Potentially speaking the sites could share data via cookies. See if you visited fb, your activities there and on TGC may be stored in cookies that advertisers they have in common could read.

@Ortu:
Yeah, they aren't necessarily sharing data, it's just a possibility that they could. The plugin is still in development as it picks up some things it shouldn't. I'm not too sure what the detection method is (it's not as simple as outgoing links) but I ran a test and visited some sites both bland and illicit.

Result:

Notice the illicit site, xham****.c** actually has the least potential "tracking"? Google seemed the biggest presence... Then again, we expected that.

Btw for anyone wanting to learn more, here's the breakdown of how this works:
Collusion Demo

RP Functions Library v1.0

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Zotoaster
20
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Joined: 20th Dec 2004
Location: Scotland
Posted: 19th Nov 2012 21:16
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Best software testing ever

"everyone forgets a semi-colon sometimes." - Phaelax
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