[ExI] Tracking your internet browsing

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-10-25 13:05, BillK wrote:
> Although new browser 'fingerprinting' techniques are being tested to 
> do tracking without using cookies. (And ways round that are also being 
> developed).

I am using a plugin that switches the user agent identification 
randomly. And two different ones that surfs/searches randomly. This adds 
some confusion.

> It's an ongoing war! :) 

Not really. It is a struggle between companies that want to track data 
and annoying users like me that generate a lot of chaff that reduce the 
data mining clarity - about me, in certain dimensions. It does not 
affect the average user (who does not care much), the average analytics 
customer (who doesn't want to sell stuff specifically to people like me) 
and hence not to the average analytics company.

Now if somebody spread malware that did adversarial data mining to salt 
analytics databases, then it would be war. Or at least a guerilla conflict.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University