Time to shut the doors to web trackers, great easy transparent tool for you

[Nazirite]

I thought this immediately.

The best way to find out who is worthy of being tracked is to compile a DB of those who don't want to be. And indeed, what better way to do it.

Same way with encryption software. You really aren't safe from anything, but it makes a nice big red flag that you don't want your things read and you have something to hide. Net 'freedom' is a very nice illusion, but not very realistic.

Exactly the same thought here.

I use start page instead of Google - That puts me straight on the radar as someone who has something to hide, no?

I don't have anything to hide but I do like to know who is trying to find out what I know, why. when and how they do it LOL

[VajraYaya]

Same way with encryption software. You really aren't safe from anything,

Hey Janos, or anybody else who may have an answer.

I currently don't use any encryption software. I am very sure all encryption these days have back doors embedded in them. But I do have a few, early, open source versions of PGP, including source code. These were the last versions before it was bought up. Do those of you 'in the know' here think using those would be difficult to crack?

[silverlightning]

Here is what I get when I am reading a thread, "one company tracking you, SkimLinks" ? Might be linked to some internal software to manage functions.

screen shot1.jpg

[Nazirite]

Here is what I get when I am reading a thread, "one company tracking you, SkimLinks" ? Might be linked to some internal software to manage functions.

I;m picking that up too. I have it blocked in ghostery.

Who is skimlinks? http://www.ghostery.com/apps/skimlinks

[silverlightning]

LOL, we are tracked by design, all incorporated on forum software. At least there are no adds and commercials here.

[Nazirite]

Inline Script from http://nexus.2012info.ca/forum/showt...-for-you/page2


var noskimlinks = true, noskimwords = true, skimlinks_product = 'vbulletin'; vBulletin.events.SkimlinksActivate.fire();
http://s.skimresources.com/js/20246X777566.skimlinks.js


var skimlinks_pub_id = '20246X777566'; var skimlinks_site = 'nexus.2012info.ca/forum'; var skimwords_horizontal_distance = 100; var skimwords_vertical_distance = 100; var noskoupon = true; var noskimproducts = true; var skimwords_instant = true;

LOL, we are tracked by design, all incorporated on forum software. At least there are no adds and commercials here.

Found it - right at the bottom

[HURRITT ENYETO]

The only thing that does my head in about these ad blockers and tracking cookie blockers etc. is that they always cause you problems loading websites, make them glitchy etc. I am currently using this one but it is already getting on my nerves. What i normally do is just don't use anything and then every few days remove all cookies etc from my system with superantispyware etc.

Its like that famous quote from the cyber expert at the pentagon or whatever said when someone asked him how to stay safe online. He said 1st rule....dont buy a computer.....2nd rule.....if you do buy a computer, don't turn it on!
That's pretty much my philosophy. Its a physical impossibility to stay totally safe or private on the internet, there are things you can do sure, but if someone is determined, they will probably succeed.

And when it comes to The Military Industrial Complex, we are now using the technology that they were using 30 years ago.They are currently on a whole different level


Hurritt

[Richard]

Who is skimlinks?

http://skimlinks.com

skimlinks, and skimwords are a revenue generating system that is an option in vbulletin 4. I registered the site last august on the chance it would make the community a little fast cash. It's only enabled for for people browsing and not logged in. Members who are logged in should never see them. Anyways, it's not much of a cash cow lol, see below.
Attachment 3362

[Nazirite]

OK Richard - I don't see a problem for guests but it is still active for members and my ghostery whacks it on the head.

What i normally do is just don't use anything and then every few days remove all cookies etc from my system with superantispyware etc.

What about LSO cookies Hurritt - most spyware doesn;t clear LSO......in fact most people don't even know where they are. In most browsers the only cookie removal is the bog standard cookies but LSO's - people don't even know they are there.

[Gigas]

To clean up LRO or flash cookie tracks, go to adobe flash player website and you can set your flash player to not hold cookie data. I had three cookie tracks as you can see from the below image on the adobe website flash player help screen to your computers settings. I cleaned them out and set the slide bar to none and checked never ask again so they stay off my machine.


Clear those pesky flash player cookie droppings and set them so they never appear again


flashplayerhelp.jpg

[InCiDeR]

I just felt that we should not treat internet technologies no different than we treat whistleblower… I just followed the money! So here we go:

PART 1
INVESTORS IN ABINE AND DNT+

About Abine

(…)Abine provides consumers with online privacy solutions that are innovative, easy to use, and actually work. With proven tools, Abine enables people to both benefit from the Web and retain control over their most personal information. Abine is backed by premier venture capital firms Atlas Ventures and General Catalyst Partners. Abine: The Online Privacy Company (TM). Abine.com.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new...led-2012-02-09


General Catalyst Partners

General Catalyst Partners is a private equity firm focused on venture capital investments in early stage technology-based companies including software, infrastructure software and applied technology businesses. The firm has also includes a growth capital team that focuses on later stage investments.

The firm, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 2000. The firm has raised approximately $1.6 billion since inception across five funds including a $600 million venture capital fund raised in 2007.(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Catalyst_Partners

It is very interesting to notice that the company also have investments in many commercial, advertising and marketing companies:
http://www.generalcatalyst.com/companies


Key people

• Chris Hughes
• Ken Novack
• Jeremy Allaire

Chris Hughes

Facebook founder to join local venture capital firm
Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook Inc. who later deployed the website My.BarackObama.com to build an online network for the presidential campaign, will be joining the Cambridge venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners as an entrepreneur in residence.(…)

http://www.boston.com/business/artic..._capital_firm/

Hughes, who grew up in Hickory, N.C., attended Phillips Academy in Andover and roomed with Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz when they were sophomores at Harvard University. The trio founded the social-networking site Facebook Inc. in 2004 and later moved it to Palo Alto, Calif. Hughes left Facebook in early 2007 to work on the Obama campaign as its director of online organizing.(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hughes

So, is this a way for Hughes to pay back on his former Facebook comrades, or is he still working with them?


Ken Novack

Ken Novack, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, is an American lawyer who currently sits on the board of BBN Technologies and is a special advisor to General Catalyst Partners. From 1998 until 2003 he served as Vice Chairman for America Online and then Time-Warner after the two companies merged. Early in his career, from 1966 to 1998, Novack served as an attorney with the firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo, PC ("Mintz"). Recently, however, Novack rejoined Mintz as Senior Counsel.(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Novack


BBN Technologies

BBN Technologies (originally Bolt, Beranek and Newman) is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. It is perhaps best known for its work in the development of packet switching (including the ARPANET and the Internet) and for its 1978 acoustical analysis for the House Select Committee on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but it is also a military contractor, primarily for DARPA.(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBN_Technologies

Now, this is interesting!!! He sits on the board of BBN Technologies… that works closely with ARPANET and DARPA!!!!


DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including computer networking, as well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface.(...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA


Jeremy D. Allaire

In 1995 Jeremy D. Allaire co-founded Allaire Corporation with his brother JJ Allaire, creating the web development tool ColdFusion. When Macromedia acquired Allaire in March 2001, Mr. Allaire became Chief Technology Officer. At Macromedia, Allaire helped create the Macromedia MX (Flash) platform. He left Macromedia in February 2003 to join venture capital firm General Catalyst.

Allaire founded Brightcove, a Cambridge, MA based company that produces Online Video Platform applications, in early 2004 to create a video distribution platform for the Internet and is now their CEO(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Allaire


Brightcove

Brightcove was founded in 2004 by Jeremy Allaire, who now serves as CEO. In March 2006, Brightcove acquired Seattle-based Metastories, makers of StoryMaker, a publishing tool for video, audio, images, and text. In May of that year it established a distribution partnership with TiVo and a content delivery partnership with Limelight Networks.

Coinciding with a series of deals with UK media companies, Brightcove opened an office in London in July, 2007.

In November 2009, Brightcove was named as one of the top two US video platform vendors.

In April 2010, it was reported that Brightcove raised $12 million in fourth-round funding, nearing a total of $100 million, but still barely breaking even with the projected $50 million in annual revenue.

In August 2010, Brightcove announced a content delivery partnertship with Akamai Technologies. Akamai & Brightcove Announce Global Alliance(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightcove


Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an Internet content delivery network headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.
July 21, 1999, at Macworld Expo New York, Apple and Akamai announced a strategic partnership to build Apple's new media network, QuickTime TV (QTV), based on QuickTime Streaming Server.

Both companies later announced that Apple had made a $12.5 million investment in the company the previous month.Apple continues to use Akamai as their primary content delivery network for a wide range of applications including software downloads from Apple's Website, QuickTime movie trailers, and the iTunes Store.(…)

(…)In September 1999 Microsoft and Akamai formed a strategic relationship to incorporate Windows Media technology in Akamai's FreeFlow service, as well as to facilitate the porting of the FreeFlow product to the Windows platform; this relationship exists to this day(…)

(…)The official U.S. government White House website (WhiteHouse.gov) uses Akamai Technologies for hosting video clips of President Barack Obama's Web addresses on their own in-house servers, after having posted previous addresses as embedded YouTube clips on the site.(…)

(…)The entire China Central Television website (CCTV.com), including its streaming video, has been hosted on Akamai’s edge servers since late 2009. Hulu uses Akamai for hosting video. MIT OpenCourseWare utilizes Akamai's EdgeSuite for its content delivery network.(…)

(…)Other customers include Facebook, Twitter, AMD, Hilton Worldwide Hotels, Amazon.com[citation needed], Adobe Systems, Netflix, Macys, Miles Kimball, J. C. Penney, Yahoo! and Blizzard Entertainment,github.(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies


Atlas Venture

Atlas Venture is an international early-stage venture capital firm that invests in technology, and life sciences companies. From the late 1990s through the mid-2000s the firm was leading investor in startup companies in both the U.S. and Europe. Atlas is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since its inception in 1980, Atlas has invested in over 350 companies in more than 16 different countries. Among the firm's most notable investments are DailyMotion, eGroups, Business Objects, DisplayLink, Gotuit, Grockit, Helicos Biosciences, Icera, Marathon Technologies, Moreover Technologies, Phase Forward, PicoChip, Ready2shop.com, Seatwave, Signature BioScience, Vermeer Technologies and Zoopla. .(…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Venture

It is once more very interesting to notice that this company also have investments in many commercial, advertising and marketing companies!!!


Key people

• Bruce Booth
• Fred Destin

Bruce Booth

Dr Bruce Booth is a Partner in the life sciences group of Atlas Venture, Inc., an early stage venture capital firm, where he focuses on identifying and funding the development of new therapeutics, medical devices, and diagnostic technologies aimed at addressing major unmet medical needs.

Dr Booth currently serves on the Boards and was a founding investor of Atlas portfolio companies Avila Therapeutics, Miragen Therapeutics, and Zafgen Inc. He has also invested in or has worked closely with ARCA Biopharma, Archemix, Prestwick Pharmaceuticals (sold to Biovail), Proprius Pharmaceuticals (sold to Cypress Biosciences), and Stromedix.

Before joining Atlas in 2005, Dr Booth was a Principal at Caxton Health Holdings, a healthcare-focused investment firm, where he helped lead the firm's private equity activities, ranging from early stage venture capital through late stage private equity.

Prior to Caxton, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised biopharmaceutical clients on R&D productivity, corporate strategy, and business development issues.(…)

http://www.ucb.com/rd/people/advisor...Dr-Bruce-Booth

Ohhh, so he has many investements in Pharmaceutical companies…


Fred Destin

Fred Destin has been a Partner at Atlas Venture since 2004 and focuses primarily on web services and consumer-facing innovation.
For Atlas, he led investments in DailyMotion (the European leader in video sharing), Seatwave (a large live events ticket marketplace), Zoopla (a disruptive online real estate play), InspirationalStores (an e-commerce play) and KDS (a SaaS travel company).

Fred recently moved to the US and led his first US investment in New York adtech company AdSafe Media. In his ten years in venture, he also invested or served on the board of PriceMinister (acquired by Rakuten), Rainfinity (acquired by EMC), CapitalIQ (acquired by S&P) and Xerox-PARC spinoff Inxight Software (acquired by BOBJ)(…)

http://www.businessinsider.com/author/fred-destin


Adsafe

AdSafe Media is the digital advertising industry’s recognized leader in brand protection and campaign performance data. Our Content Rating System is the only solution that scores and evaluates the brand safety and context of web pages on the individual page level. Utilizing these ratings, we protect advertisers’ brands from appearing on pages that do not conform to brand guidelines.(…)

http://adsafemedia.com/about-adsafe

Well that is something, he has many investments in heavy advertising, comercial and marketing companies…


CONCLUSION

• Is it not strange that the two biggest investors in Abine are so closed involved in heavy commercial, advertising and marketing companies!!!
• Wouldn’t that be counterproductive?
• Here maybe we have the reson why DNT+ is ”calling home” once every day, to serve them some statistics they say we are protected from!?!?
• And I haven’t even mentioned the connection to DARPA! LOL

NEXT PART 2
How does DNT+ work and what information does it provide the homeserver when it is ”calling in”

[Janos]

Great work. I'd not use it on the involvement of Akamai alone.

[Gigas]

Looking in files that DNT installed, I see they decide who is to be blocked when the user of DNT is creeping around the internet. So they claim the software checks in once a day for updates. Its funny my firewall didn't throw an alert to this programs being allowed to call out on the internet.

One time some time ago, I had a software program to monitor net bandwidth usage. It was expired since it was a pay to use thing. Very small and not worth paying for since all it did was graph incoming and out going bandwidth. The thing checked into the software developers server and the software developer un-installed it off my computer. That was before I had a router and firewall.

I did some coding in VB6 and made some programs that could send your computers mac address to me with some other info if I were to make a software installer installing software on your machine. I could get computer name, mac address, system info. The internutz a creepy shadowy place whether you want to know that or not.

[Nazirite]

So they claim the software checks in once a day for updates. Its funny my firewall didn't throw an alert to this programs being allowed to call out on the internet.

Have you tried blacklisting everything and then over a few days gradually and individually whitelist only software you explicityly want to have access to the net?

Are you on Linux Gigas?

[robert]

A follow up on the plug in installation.
I have 946 Trackers blocked since i've installed it.

BTW, thx everyone for all those very interesting informations!

-Robert

[Nazirite]

I've spent the last few days cleaning up my system and trying to lockdown my firewall.

I would appreciate some help if it is out there.

Two things I can't stop - everytime I click on a bookmark or URL my browser reports to Google and Akamai. I can block Akamai but it slows my system down because it tries ten or more IP address when it can't get through my firewall. Google does the same but has many IP blocks to try when the first does not succeed. The added nausea when I do manage to totally block google is that so many sites and domains won't load because they are linked to google in the load page sequence.

What to do? Any ideas?

[knapsack]

You can block those requests to Google Analytics via their opt-out plugin, if your browser supports it:
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Even if the page says 'does not support your browser,' try and install it anyway, because it said that for me, and I was still able to install it.

Also, for firefox, you can install adblock plugin to block adsense and the others.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir.../adblock-plus/

[Odah]

well one way or another ..tghings still cost money.. i am fine with being tracked ...when it means you don't have to pay a subscription fee to use certain sites ..or that it provide a little money to those who provide information ..

if you believe the people who take the time to gather and place information where you can find it and pay for hosting and what ever.. have no right to make money.. then fine ..

i am more interested in blocking and removing maleware ..keyloggers and viri..that really threaten and do damage to you or your computer .