Recognizing your computer via cookies? IP? Flash Objects? - New proposed EBAY policy

[supersenwins]

Hi vicvelcro, oompaloompa and others,

How to turn off Flash selectively for FF? Is it thru FF addon flashblock or is there any other way to do it?

I personally use Flashblock addon for Firefox. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but I never bothered looking around, since it suits my needs just fine.

[oompaloompa]

yes ^^ me too or just run uninstall adobe perhaps

A person would have to remove flash activex, flash plugins, and then manually remove the LSO storage tree for each user account on their computer. That means NO KITTEN CANNON!

Easier to block flash with an additional plugin.

[oompaloompa]

somehow I managed to unistall flash on main user for firefox but not for IE.

then on all other users no flash on firefox, without using objection....I checked them all on adobe settings and seeing if can run anything on youtube etc, nope

For IE -

Tools > Internet Options > Programs (tab) > Show - add ons that have been used by internet explorer

In that box, select what you want to get rid of, and then if it's an add on, enable or disable it on the bottom left selector dots. If it's active X, remove it on the bottom right radio button.

[moloko]

I prefer to use vmware with no flash installed and after doing all shut down and use my pc.

Using the VMWare method causes a perpetually blank slate. Not a good thing for a very active ebay/pp. It won't be long before they want verification. It will be a recurring thing. Eventually, they will SLAM you with the 'full monty'.

[moloko]

Thats not true, why blank state, it is the same as other PC.

When you finish VMWare, everything is gone. No cookies.

BLANK SLATE

[jerec12]

I delete cookies for 4 sell accounts after I log in EACH and EVERY time. They ask me to verify every 3 or 4 months it seems but not all every time.

[sick-bay]

Use the following safety checklist to ensure privacy on ebay or any other web site:


1. cookies - use CCleaner or similar to delete cookies BEFORE and AFTER visits to ebay AND other sites that track - THERE ARE MANY - and many of them have agreements with ebay to exchange information ( Amazon, YAHOO, Google, most commercial portals) For example, "doubleclick.com" is a NOTORIOUS hunter of user info and they specialize in tracking users accross sites, and selling this information to third parties.

2. change IP , goes without saying, explained elsewhere on this board. Check your IP each time you changed it to ensure it is new ( on an IP checking site)

3. Flash Objects.
You can use short registry scripts available on the web to disable/enable flash
on the fly. OR - keep Flash off your conmputer altogether. Caution::: with Firefox, I notice I have Flash installed ( embedded in the browser) without ever explicitly installing it myself.
Flash installs EXECUTABLE code on your machine, which can see everything - all hardware and all their serial numbers,
ANY executable code installed on your conmputer has access to the hardware, to POSITIVELY identify you no matter what. A web site CAN NEVER see identifying features of your PC, BUT a website can querry Flash code to get that info, because Flash resides locally, and talks to web sites - it is made for that.
You do not lose much by excluding Flash. 95%+ of Flash content is advertising or annoying intro screens.

4. Email
Send and receive all email in plain text-
NO HTML, No graphics, No rich text, No buttons or scripting. Just plain 1967 style Telex.

5. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER install any toolbars provided by third parties.

NOT the YAHOO toolbar
NOT the Google toolbar
NOT the MSN/Bing/Hotmail toolbar
NOT ANY search toolbar
( of curse not the ebay or paypal toolbars... duuuh)
Instlling search toolbars brings in EXECUTABLE CODE onto your machine. this code does the same thing Flash does. It can see all parts of your machine - serial numbers and all- and communicates with the exterior.

The most lucrative Business on the web today is user data mining. Yahoo is NO LONGER a search engine (it has failed miserably at that) It is now the premier "TARGETED MARKETING" enterprise. They place cookies on your machine, which are then read and re-written by many other places you visit. each one analyzing where you have been. information is sold to all participating sites ( ebay is a BIG consumer of this type of info - it subscribes to all major networks). If ANY of the in-network sites has additional information on you - either by you identifying yourself with a user name- like Yahoo Groups, or Amazon, or Google Gmail, or ordering pizza online, etc, that info is grabbed into the database ( -minus the credit card number, to keep it legal) and shared with member sites.
This is in ABSENCE of a 3-rd party toolbar.
If you HAVE a search toolbar installed, then you're cooked.
They have positive identification from the first minute.

It is all done in the name of
" creating a superior web user experience, by providing targeted content"

[mike2146]

I'm sorry, I am pretty new at this. I am trying to access another eBay acct (my girlfriend's old acct that she hasn't used in years) and want to be sure I dont link them so...

I did these so far
1 - Create new Windows User.
2 - Run CCleaner and clear cookies.
3 - Change the IP by resetting modem and confirming the changed IP address.

Here's where I run into confusion:

Flash Objects - Is all I need to do is disable them in Firefox? Is there anything to delete?

Search toolbars - How do I know if they are ALL deleted/uninstalled?

Please, please, please I need help. If I can get into my GF's account I will be able to confirm that I can use it and I will purchase the Stealth Book to start a backup acct to the one I currently have.

Thanks!

[Imakemoney]

All the answers you seek are in the stealth guide and in the subscribers section of the forum.

[matsonmar]

Originally Posted by Vicvelcro

When you finish VMWare, everything is gone. No cookies.

BLANK SLATE

yeah but if you keep the copy of vmware everything is ok ...

[karineh]

when I open up my "network connection details", there is a IP physical address
on top of my IP address. (it is something like bc-30-5b-....) I assume this will never change, even if you change your IP address.

So can ebay track me on my new account w/ new IP address WHICH physical is the same)

[oompaloompa]

the mac address you mean - current info is that ebay does not track mac....

[karineh]

thanks for teh reply,

Yes I found this out

[sick-bay]

This is not the definitive answer.

Here's the definitive answer:

..............Then quit firefox, which will delete the cookies, and log in again. Although cookies are gone, this second time using firefox the website will claim to recognize your computer.

............. So cookies are definitely part of the answer here, maybe the whole answer.

This needs more research. More data.

THIS is:

evercookie - virtually irrevocable persistent cookies


evercookie -- never forget.
October 11, 2010: Reported on the front page of the New York Times

evercookie is a javascript API available that produces
extremely persistent cookies in a browser. Its goal
is to identify a client even after they've removed standard
cookies, Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects or LSOs), and
others.

evercookie accomplishes this by storing the cookie data in
several types of storage mechanisms (14 places in all) that are available on
the local browser. [Most of these cannot be deleted directly, because they are data embedded in the Operating system and not a file you can see and delete.]
Additionally, if evercookie has found the
user has removed any of the types of cookies in question, it
recreates them using each mechanism available.



1. Read the article.
2. download the javascript code, study it and understand it.
3. edit the javascript code to place random numbers into all those locations. Most of the work is already done by the author.
( simply coming in to ebay or PP with zeroes for all that data kind of singles you out as being a wiseguy ( the same wiseguy as last time - if IP geolocation is used) Anonimyzing technologies only work if enough people use them.

Oh, yeah...... and learn javascript.

A lot of people come to this forum whining about getting caught even with cookies deleted, but fail to mention they installed a toolbar (google, ebay, paypal, yahoo, or ANY toolbar) which effectively gives websites access to hardware data like NIC address, or O/S serial (which also makes your user-swapping scheme useless.).

You can't know just a little bit. You either study and know everything, or you'll be dangerous to yourself.

I'm sorry, that's the reality.

(ASPKIN, you might want to make this persistent.)

[sick-bay]

Incidentally, most users of this forum advocate upgrading to the latest browser as a solution to safer annonimity.
In fact, more recent browsers offer a larger subset of those 14 storage locations, for persistent cookie storage.
Internet Explorer 3 offered just 1. (plain cookies)

4 of those 14 new cookie locations are implemented in HTML version 5 , which is supported only by the most cutting edge browsers, like Chrome 10, Fx 4 and IE8 and 9

look up "SANDBOXIE" a free utility that makes any browser run inside a sanbox (where it thinks it it writing data to the computer, but it's in fact writing to a temporary space that can be deleted.)
also
SAFARI, in Private browsing mode, does the same thing as Sandboxie.
That's an initiative by the late Steve Jobs, aimed NOT at protecting your privacy, but rather at preventing websites from collecting user data, so that at some point in the future, Apple could SELL or charge royalties for getting that data.
Very visionary, Steve jobs, and underhanded as always.

Safari does this as of version 4.0. Keep an installation copy of this, as future versions may exclude this functionality. ( and disable browser automatic upgrades completely)

Don't send me messages, I do not check this forum more than once a year.

[levi6482]

so wot are we saying?? Is firefox still suitable to use without deleting cookies all the time & just switching from one user to the other??

[anon5o1]

Very interesting article on Evercookie with the creator:
The next front in the cookie wars: Fighting the Evercookie | TechRepublic

BleachBits Software (Claims to clean Evercookie):
Download | BleachBit
Note: CCleaner does not remove Evercookie

Killing The Evercookie for Chrome:
Jeremiah Grossman: Killing the Evercookie (Google Chrome w/o Restart)

Killing The Evercookie for Safari:
Killing the Evercookie - Dominic White