Yes, I like dynamic IP addresses and Network Address Translation because they help to protect my privacy. Google offers great online services, no doubt about it, but I am not willing to give up my privacy for them. Without some countermeasures though, it's difficult to keep Internet companies from collecting data without my consent even though I only use a single online service from Google. So here's a list of things I have put in place to stay as anonymous as possible when surfing the net:
- Whenever I connect to a 3G network I get a new IP address. Good, so I can't be followed via my IP address indefinitely.
- My DSL line is automatically interrupted and reconnected once a day and I get a new IP address each time. Same effect as above.
- I allow cookies in the browser but they are deleted as soon as I close the browser. To me that looks like a good compromise between functionality and privacy as my track runs cold as soon as I close the browser.
- For a few selected sites I've configured permanent cookies. Google is not among them…
- Adblock prevents Google Adsense to follow me around on the web via JavaScript plug-ins on pages.
- I deactivated Flash Cookies in the Macromedia configuration web page.
- On my mobile devices I use Opera Mini. There's a compressions server in the network that can follow me around and I assume they could follow my browing history. Not so nice from a privacy point of view, but at least it's not big G…
- As I use Google Reader on the mobile there's a cookie set by Google which probably allows them to track my searches as well. So I use Bing for searching on the mobile.
What do you think, am I missing something or could I do more? Any big loopholes?
Question :: When you get IP address either from 3G network or from DSL network you are authenticated before an IP address is allocated. So the network knows exactly who you are while getting IP address. So even if your IP address is different, networks can easily track you down 🙂
Hi Ameya,
yes, you are of course quite right, my local network service provider identifies me and assigns an IP address for a connection so he knows who I am. While that cant be realistically avoided, the other measures I described prevents anyone else from tracking me.
Thanks for commenting!
Martin
Probably should look at an external VPN host to tunnel through as well. ADSL providers usually rotate only one or two IP’s (but no more than a handful) per client.
Changing different browsers and/or do mobile queries through twittering @querynet