Privacy Digest 11/22
Does Ghostery block ads on YouTube?
Yes! Loud and clear! According to internal tests ran by our developers, the Ghostery ad blocker prevents you from seeing ads on YouTube to a safe 99%. If you happen to find the one percent where an ad slips through the filters and magical cosmetics of our ad blocker, please drop us a line with the example at support@ghostery.com. It will help us to cover it as well.
ghostery.com
How the U.S. Federal Government Buys Cell Phone Location Data
Over the past few years, data brokers and federal military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies have formed a vast, secretive partnership to surveil the movements of millions of people. Many of the mobile apps on our cell phones track our movements with great precision and frequency. Data brokers harvest our location data from the app developers, and then sell it to these agencies.
eff.org
Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites
A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook.
themarkup.org
Firefox Just Gave 3 Billion Google Chrome Users A Reason To Switch
3 billion Chrome users have now a reason to switch to Firefox, because the privacy-focused browser has confirmed big news around ad blockers, like Ghostery. Upcoming changes to Google Chrome, dubbed Manifest V3, may cause some ad blockers to break. This gave rise to justifiable turmoil among browser extension developers and the privacy community. Get to know the Ghostery view through our CEO's Jean-Paul Schmetz interview.
forbes.com
Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users worldwide
Starting this week, Firefox is rolling out Total Cookie Protection by default to all Firefox users worldwide, making Firefox the most private and secure major browser available across Windows, Mac and Linux. Total Cookie Protection is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were created, thus preventing tracking companies from using these cookies to track your browsing from site to site.
blog.mozilla.org
What Do Those Pesky 'Cookie Preferences' Pop-Ups Really Mean?
WIRED asked the engineer who invented cookies what they mean and how to handle them.
wired.com
Farewell, Internet Explorer: The old Microsoft browser retires at 27
As of Wednesday, June 15th 2022, Microsoft will no longer support the once-dominant browser that scads of web surfers loved to hate — and a few still claim to adore.
latimes.com