ISSUE 380|COMPUTERSHOPPER|OCTOBER 2019 101101
At the end of the procedure, you’ll be told
howmanyrequests were successful and
howmanyfailed. Forthe failed attempts,
which areusually down to technical issues,
youcan retry.Wefound that after three
attempts, 71 opt-out requests remained:
clearly,atougher approach that doesn’t
rely on ad networksisrequired.
Donottrack
Most browsers haveanoption to send aDo
nottrack request, which is designed to tell
ad networksand the likethat youdon’t
want to be followed. It sounds nice, but the
featurecan be ignored by ad networks, so
it doesn’t work very well in practice. Still, it’s
an option worth enabling forthose sites
and networksthat followthe rules.
To do this in Chrome, go to Settings and
use the search bar to look for‘do nottrack’.
Turn on the option that saysSend a‘Do Not
Track’ request with your browsing traffic.
Abetteroption is to install the Ghostery
add-on, which is available forfreefor most
browsers, including Chrome and Firefox. It’s
built to block ads and stop ads tracking you.
Youcan install it fromwww.ghostery.com.
Once installed, Ghostery will block
adverts and trackers on every sitethat
youvisit. This reduces the income of the
websitethat youvisit, so we’d recommend
turning offadblocking on the sites that you
use most and trust, so theykeep earning
income and stay available.
When youload awebsite, youcan click
the Ghostery icon to see what’sbeen
blocked and howmanytrackers havebeen
stopped. The best options, we find, areto
turn offEnhanced Ad Blocking, which
means that you’ll see adverts on websites
that youvisit, but trackers areblocked.
LeaveonSmart Blocking, which blocksslow
and unreliable trackers. Also leaveon
Enhanced Anti-Tracking, which will
anonymise anyinformation
senttotrackers, so even if
datadoes leaveyour
computer,there’s no
identifiable information.
Importantly,Ghostery has
been updated to be smart
about howitblockstrackers.
Previous versions could
cause problems on some
websites, preventing features
from working; the new
version is much better,
keeping sites running but
cutting out the tracking
information automatically.Browserfingerprinting
Cookie tracking is one wayofadnetworks
keeping tabs on you, but what if companies
don’t need to do this and canidentify you
in adifferentway? That’swherebrowser
fingerprinting comes in.
When youvisit awebsite, your browser
candivulge alot of information about you
to asite, such as the browser you’reusing,
the language your browser is setto, the
operating systemyou have, and even
some systeminformation, such as the
graphics card youhave. In addition, your
browser canbeforcedtodocertain things,
such as using HTML Canvastorender a
font,which produces results that differ
between OS and browser.
This information canbeused to ensure
that awebsiterenders properly,but it can
also be used against you. By collecting lots
and lots of variables, the resulting picture
means that your computer canbe
uniquely identified, which means
it canbetracked, all without
having to use acookie.
To see fingerprinting in action,
check outamiunique.org,which will
showyou the variables that canbe
collected and will tell youifyour
browser is unique. So what can
be done about this? Well, at the
moment, notmuch.
Thereare fingerprintblockers that
randomise some variables to prevent
tracking but theycan’t randomise
everything, otherwise your browser
may notshowawebsiteproperly.
These tools canalso most likely be
detected, too. The result is that
anyone using browser fingerprinting
cantell that you’reusing such atool and
add that to the information it has collected
about youtostill build afingerprint.
Fortunately,fingerprinting isn’t ahuge
issue at the moment, and the best wayto
block tracking adverts is to stop tracking
cookies with atool such as Ghostery.LEFT:Yo ur browser cantell ad networksnot to
track you, although manyignorethe requestABOVE:Ghostery is designed to block ad trackersABOVE:Yo ur browser cangiveawayalotabout you