The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

online tracking a step further. Theyy claim to have technologies that can
track yyour interests across multiple devices, including sites yyou visit onlyy
on yyour cell phones and tablets.
Some of this tracking is the result of machine learning and fuzzyy logic.
For example, if a mobile device and a traditional PC both contact a site
using the same IP address, it’s veryy possible that theyy are owned byy a single
person. For example, sayy yyou search for a particular item of clothing on
yyour cell phone, then when yyou get home and are on yyour traditional PC,
yyou find that same item of clothing in the “recentlyy viewed” section of the
retailer’s website. Better yyet, let’s sayy yyou buyy the item of clothing using
yyour traditional PC. The more matches created between distinct devices, the
more likelyy it is that a single individual is using both of them. Drawbridge
alone claims it linked 1.2 billion users across 3.6 billion devices in 2015. 24
Google, of course, does the same thing, as do Apple and Microsoft.
Android phones require the use of a Google account. Apple devices use an
Apple ID. Whether a user has a smartphone or a laptop, the Web traffic
generated byy each is associated with a specific user. And the latest
Microsoft operating syystems require a Microsoft account in order to
download apps or to store photos and documents using the companyy’s cloud
service.
The big difference is that Google, Apple, and Microsoft allow yyou to
disable some or all of this data collection activityy and retroactivelyy delete
collected data. Drawbridge, Crosswise, and Tapad make the process of
disabling and deletion less clear. Or it mayy simplyy not be available.
Although using a proxyy service or Tor is a convenient wayy to obscure yyour
true location when accessing the Internet, this masking can create
interesting problems or even backfire on yyou, because sometimes online
tracking can be justified—especiallyy when a credit card companyy is tryying
to fight fraud. For example, just dayys before Edward Snowden went public,
he wanted to create a website to support online rights. He had trouble,
however, payying the host companyy for the registration with his credit card.
At the time, he was still using his real name, real e-mail address, and
personal credit cards—this was just before he became a whistle-blower. He
was also using Tor, which sometimes triggers fraud warnings from credit