Patch Lady – 31 days of paranoia – day 9

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Patch lady here – and today’s paranoia topic is one that I’m sure ALL of you have seen.  You go to a web site.  You search for something.  You then go
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – 31 days of paranoia – day 9]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Elly, Ascaris, SueW, GreatAndPowerfulTech, woody, satrow

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In relation to the extension, fortunately I’m neither a US citizen nor a Facebook user so don’t need to decide whether this is genuine or whether ProPublica have their own political agenda:)

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“Even if you don’t think this is an interesting idea, may I strongly urge you to ensure you are signed up to vote.  For some states, the deadline was today.

I don’t want to make this post political in any way, I just want to urge you to vote, period.  It’s time we all keep a bit more eye on things.”

I see an awful lot of people who get only superficial information from ads and headlines, from late-night ‘comedy’, etc. and who don’t read or try to understand what’s written in the ballet, specifically in the laws they are voting on. I knew a good number of people who fought and suffered in wars to maintain our country’s principles and the Constitution they are enumerated by, and would prefer that people just stay home if don’t have the time, the interest, or the background to thoroughly learn about and decide issues rationally. I hope   that most readers here aren’t in that category.

Yes, I am one who totally shuns ‘social media’.

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This is a very reasonable point of view. I’ve heard variations on the theme many times. I am worried by the message it sends to comment politically, despite Susan’s caution.

Many of those valiant heroes fought for the right for ALL citizen’s to have a voice. I believe that getting a person to vote is the first step to involve them in the process and to become more informed. Not the last step.

Once committed to voting, natural curiosity and the desire to perform well often causes new voters to ask more questions. The opinion they may form from the answers they receive is part of their inherent right of freedom. There will always be people who do not reach your or my level of interest. But that is not the Constitutional basis for extending the right to vote.

Our system is vibrant enough to withstand the uninformed.

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“Our system is vibrant enough to withstand the uninformed.”

I can provide many examples which show that not to be the case. It’s bad enough when laws or measures are purposely given misleading titles, making more investigation needed to know the real situation, but when many voters decide issues based on headlines, or worse, on emotion, race, or monetary rewards to themselves rather than on principle, we become more and more like Venezuela.

I’m not suggesting regulations; just that self-selection is a valuable tool. Stress learning about the Country’s principles and why our system is the best in existence, then interest in it will take care of the rest and coercing people to get them to vote won’t be needed.

In the 1800’s and early part of the last century, citizenship was a required subject in many (if not all) western US grade schools, and the material students had to know to graduate was considerably harder and more involved than was taught in the local high schools thirty years ago.

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It is possible the only thing we disagree on is how Susan’s

… I just want to urge you to vote, period.

and my own

… getting a person to vote is the first step … Not the last step.
…
Once committed to voting, …

became through your reading

… coercing people to get them to vote …

I do not believe in requiring people to vote. I do not believe in forcing people to vote. I do not believe in punishing non-voters. I do not wish to control a person’s vote, ask how they voted, or judge them for a vote already cast.

I do wish to exchange views on topics up for vote, both to possibly influence them and to see if perhaps I should be influenced. And I want to encourage them to make use of their free right to vote in whatever way their conscience directs them.

I encourage us to return to the technical discussion of tracking the trackers and their targeted ads with ProPublica.

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I concur. I believe many of the founders thought only the educated should vote.

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I’m very careful when logging into Facebook. I use Sandboxie to isolate Chrome. All cookies are cleaned first, all history is cleaned, uBlock Origin keeps the dozens of ads away, and still I want to know if they’re letting the nastiness into my feed. So the extension is installed. Thanks, Susan!

GreatAndPowerfulTech

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I can happily say I’ve never seen this particular thing (the ads that follow you across domains).  I’ve heard of it from a lot of people, but never seen it.

There are only a handful of sites I have whitelisted in Adblock Origin, and the only one of those I use frequently is AskWoody, and the ads I see here are delightfully random (and only rarely even remotely related to anything I’d be interested in, but as long as Woody gets paid for the view, that’s fine).  Even the Amazon ones remain unconnected to any activity on my part.  NoScript and Adblock Origin block most of the trackers (and I have third party cookies disallowed in Waterfox), and those trackers that are not blocked are generally ones I know about because they’re first-party (meaning I am going to Amazon or Google directly, not visiting a site that uses one of their trackers).  I use Waterfox addons that ensure that my first-party cookies are wiped frequently, and I use an ISP that uses dynamic IP addresses (from a large pool including one of the top 10 largest metro areas in the US), so they are changed frequently.  I don’t have Flash enabled, so no sites can use Flash LSO “supercookies.”

I have Facebook, Twitter, etc., completely blocked, in the same manner as Noel has blocked them.  I’ve never used them, and I feel safe in saying I never will.

It’s not impossible to track me using the browser fingerprinting techniques you may have read about, but it’s pretty unlikely the scripts that perform those tricks are going to make it through my adblocker and my scriptblocker.  If they get snippets of data about me here and there, but they can’t actually show me any ads, I guess then I don’t really notice.  I’m pretty sure my countermeasures mean that any string of info they manage to get will soon be rendered irrelevant as the digital trail goes cold when my cookies are clear and I’m using a new IP address.  In other words, the next day!

 

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