Another day, another data detox task. Today I found out that I am living in a Panopticon and I’m not the guard. I dove deep into the topic of what my browser is doing behind my back and I’m sorry to report none of it is good.
Today’s task began with asking me to navigate to the EFF’s Panopticlick page to find out how much information I’m handing over to companies via my web browser. Here are the finding as I began today’s journey:
Ummmmmm…whoops. I used to be an avid Firefox user and was totally on top of mad data protection ninja moves. And then everywhere I worked went to G Suite applications and I let things slide. I was using Chrome here for this exercise (per my current habits) and was a little chagrined at how blase’ I had become about my data.
I installed Privacy Badger and tried again. Here is what Panopticlick showed was happening now that I had a firewall installed.
Better, but I decided to go rogue and download AdNauseum (which is banned from Chrome right now) and enable Developer mode to make it work. As a result, on Day 4 of my Data Detox, I have this little row of superhero extensions protecting me as I roam the open web.
Finally, because I am working on my data karma, I donated to the EFF to say thank you for these awesome tools! And you should, too <3
I support @EFF because digital rights are human rights. https://eff.org/join
