How to Avoid Online Tracking. (Hint: You Can’t.)

Methods for Blocking Cookies … and How They Fall Short

If you want to reduce the amount of information that advertisers gather about you, here’s a step-by-step guide to doing it.

– Delete Existing Cookies.

How to Do It: You can delete cookies using your internet browser. Every new version of every browser has a different procedure for blocking websites from serving your computer cookies. Finding the right place to do it can be confusing. To find what works for your browser, click here.

Why It’s Doomed: One problem with deleting cookies from your browser is that you’re relying on the company that created your browser to have an up-to-date list of companies with cookies to block. If your browser is even a month old, there will be new companies and new cookies that don’t appear on the list, so they can’t be blocked. The only way to stay protected is to continually update to the newest browser.

“The main problem is you really have to know what you’re doing,” says Jonathan Mayer, a student at Stanford University who is researching a universal “Do Not Track” tool similar to “Do Not Call” for telemarketers.

Read: A Privacy Advocate Weighs In on Do Not Track

The other problem with deleting cookies is the Flash cookie. Based on Adobe Flash technology, these cookies simply re-spawn themselves every time you try to delete them.

– Set Your Browser to Ban Future Cookies.

How to Do It: In addition to deleting existing cookies, browsers allow you to ban sites from planting new ones on your computer. To find out how to do it on your browser, click here.

Why It’s Doomed: This method cannot be 100% effective for the same reasons that deleting current cookies doesn’t entirely work. Browser companies can’t keep up with all the new tracking companies and cookies. Once installed, many Flash cookies can’t be deleted.

“Users are limited in self-help,” according to a study of anti-tracking techniques by a team of university researchers, “because anti-tracking tools effective against this technique are not widespread, and presence of Flash cookies is rarely disclosed in privacy policies.”

– Download Super-Cookies.

How to do it: Many online ads are delivered by advertising networks, which have contracts to gather data and serve ads on thousands of different sites. Most reputable ad networks offer people the chance to opt-out of online tracking by giving them opportunity to download “super-cookies,” which delete cookies that the networks’ websites try to download. They place these super-cookies on or near their privacy policies, to show that they care about consumers’ privacy concerns.

Why It’s Doomed: Three Reasons.

1)   Ad networks are basically invisible. It’s difficult for most consumers to even know what an ad network is, much less find their websites. And it’s basically impossible to know which network serves ads to which websites. So you might be protected on some websites and not on others, and you’ll never know which is which.

2)   Since new cookies are always being created, it makes sense to regularly delete them. But deleting the bad cookies also deletes the ad network’s good super-cookies. Which is why Ad networks’ anti-cookie cookies “don’t really work,” Mayer says.

3)   Many ads are delivered to your website without help from ad networks.

Ad networks’ anti-cookie cookies “don’t really work,” says Jonathan Mayer, a student at Stanford University who is researching a universal “Do Not Track” tool similar to “Do Not Call” for telemarketers.

Tips continued … >>>

Image: Rodrigo Senna, via Flickr.com