back to article So Brave: Browser biz sics Brit watchdogs on Google's info slurpage

Privacy-focused browser maker Brave has filed complaints with British and Irish data protection authorities seeking an end to the online sharing of protected data by advertising firms like Google. The complaints claim online behavioral ad targeting – which Google euphemizes as "personalized advertising" – gathers unnecessary …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    real-time bidding

    This system is even more disgusting than I imagined.

  2. Pomgolian
    Mushroom

    cat /etc/hosts

    cat /etc/hosts

    0.0.0.0 www.googletagmanager.com

    0.0.0.0 www.googleadservices.com

    0.0.0.0 googleads.g.doubleclick.net

    0.0.0.0 ad-emea.doubleclick.net

    0.0.0.0 ad.doubleclick.net

    0.0.0.0 doubleclick.net

    0.0.0.0 www.doubleclick.net

    0.0.0.0 www.google-analytics.com

    0.0.0.0 google-analytics.com

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's not nearly enough defences!

      Last time I checked I had 30k+ entries in Hosts.... You also have to dump services that betray your trust Server-Side. Which basically means avoid buying anything online including booking flights and hotels, as those services are saturated with trackers (trivago / expedia / booking.com, plus most airlines etc).

      1. It also means swapping google search for Startpage / DDG.

      2. Dump Messenger / WhatsApp / Facebook / Instagram for 'Signal'.

      3. Dump Gmail for ProtonMail or chance your ISP's email if there is one and if you dare.

      4. Dump Android! Its an open-prison ankle bracelet tag. There's no way to fully sanitize it short of rooting. But if you purge all google / facebook / phone-brand spyware and install Netguard, its better than nothing.

      5. Don't ever use Location Services on any device / smartphone!

      6. Try to close all facebook / google owned services and never use those accounts to log into any 3rd-party websites.

      7. Dump win10. Its Adware / Spyware! Microsoft appear to be in total denial...

      1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: That's not nearly enough defences!

        I'll be honest, I don't care enough to do all these things. For my part, I am willing to trade a measure of privacy for a measure of convenience, but I think it's worthwhile to consider all these options and to at least be mindful about what data sharing is happening, which also requires the advertisers and other service providers to be transparent about what they're doing with our data. For Android users, you may also want to consider Blokada and anyone at all tech-savvy may want to run a Pi-Hole at home.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: _c_a_t__/_e_t_c_/_h_o_s_t_s_

      @Reg Staff.... WARNING

      Replying to the OP post title as is causes Cloudflare to block the post. Obviously there's some pattern matching being done behind the scenes against the following string: [Remove the underscores]

      Re: _c_a_t__/_e_t_c_/_h_o_s_t_s_

      ~~~~~~~~~~~

      "One more step

      Please complete the security check to access theregister.co.uk

      Why do I have to complete a CAPTCHA?

      Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

      What can I do to prevent this in the future?

      If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware.

      If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices."

      1. Pomgolian

        Re: _c_a_t__/_e_t_c_/_h_o_s_t_s_

        Yeah, I got some really messed up page, like a huge mobile site rendering on a desktop and a Google I'm not a robot CAPTCHA pop up when I posted it. I kind of saw the irony with that given the contents of the file.

    3. big_D Silver badge

      Re: cat /etc/hosts

      My hosts file is nearly 50,000 lines long now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        'My hosts file is nearly 50,000 lines long now.'

        I double-checked..... Excel row count = 58k. But there's lots of comments in there too. Anyway feel free to share your sources. I mostly use these 2 below as a base, and then add anything else I come across including blocking the usual suspects like Twitter / Facebook / Google / Microsoft / LinkedIn / Instagram / Yahoo / Bing etc. You can still open those pages at arms length using

        Startpage-Proxy.

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

        http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt

        1. big_D Silver badge

          Re: 'My hosts file is nearly 50,000 lines long now.'

          Yes, I use Someonewhocares as well, and:

          https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all

          This blocks nearly 1500 Facebook domains - both Facebook and its tracking and advetising s**t

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "We build privacy and security into all our products from the very earliest stages"

    Translation: we try to keep all the PII we slurp private to and secure in our systems until we sell it.

    Alternative translation: String of char

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "Google said it intends to comply with data protection rules"

    Yes. Some day. At the proper juncture. In the fullness of time. When the situation will be right.

    Etc...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Governments and Authoritarians want you monitored.

    Privacy is a necessity for democracy, for revolution via ballot rather than bullet. Individuals must have privacy and governments must be monitored and transparent for democracy to work. The issue is that important.

    Innovation and growth stops when individuals are monitored. Even if someone didn't care about rights and freedoms they should be very concerned about a system that prevents innovation, limits our ability to react to the many unknowns we as humanity will be facing.

    We have known for a long time that just having people believe they are being watched 24/7 makes if far easy to control them. It is the foundation of many religions and ideologies and why they fight freedom and basic rights even today.

    Everyone should know and understand the importance of basic rights and privacy. Instead it is a side discussion at sites like this and produces ineffective, minor government programs more concerned about optics than rights and freedoms.

    We can teach 5yr olds gender and ethnic diversity basics but have no programs to integrate understanding of the basic rights and privacy needed. Rights and privacy needed for democracies to benefit individuals and produce a healthy society for all.

    Appealing to governments beholden to power and money to protect us from power and money does not feel promising but what else is there? So Thanks Brave, which reminds me to top up my Brave Payments, it's the least I can do, it might be the only thing I do but at least it's something.

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