[sf-lug] cookies in Ubuntu

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Mikki McGee (mikkimc at earthlink.net):

> Thank you all, for the replies.   It is the privacy issue, and the
> idea that someone is tracking my computer use is a bit repugnant.
> Sort of pulling the blinds, but not checking under the bed sort of
> thing.  Somewhere short of paranoia?

At the risk of seeming to toot my own horn, I really do recommend that
you read my lecture slides and notes about Firefox browser privacy,
then, as it's directly relevant to your concerns.  And you should be
aware that HTTP cookies were merely what the tracking companies relied
on when they were _just getting started_, in 1995.  They've gotten a
great deal more sophisticated:  As I described in my lecture, Samy
Kankar has recently reverse-engineered all of the methods the trackers
use and how they reinforce and supplement each other -- and JavaScript
is the glue that holds it all together, which is why NoScript is the key
piece, if you want to defeat such methods and re-level the playing
field.

There are also other reasons to care, other than just not caring to be
spied on.  A browser that's been de-junked using NoScript, AdBlock Plus,
OptimizeGoogle, Beef Taco, and either Objection or my hacked cronjob to
chop off Flash cookies, is markedly faster, less crash-prone, less
bloated in RAM (despite the extra browser extensions), and resistant to
many security attacks on browsers, which overwhelmingly rely -- of
course -- on third-party JavaScript as the attack vector, hence are made
to go away by NoScript.

Related article, mentioned in my slides and notes:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/firefox.html