Tag Archives: Cookie

HTML5 Privacy Matters: DOM Storage. How to solve it in only 2 steps!

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Recently I started an online course that was created using the Google Course Builder.

After I registered the course I was not able to access it because “my browser didn’t allow the web storage” and, for this reason, a message informed me that it would be necessary to use a up-to-date browser as Chrome or Firefox.

The only problem is that I always use Firefox. Obviously a “particular” version of Firefox where I also added a bunch of different add-ons to enhance the privacy protection level of my navigation and, for this reason, the Google course was not available for me.

Normally I would have decided to quit the course because I prefer not to modify my Firefox configuration after I spent so much time searching the best add-ons to preserve a minimum of privacy.  But, in this case, I really wanted to attend the course and so I decided to manually operate on the Firefox configuration to “solve” the problem and allow Google to keep all the information it would have considered as essential.

This is the list of what I did:

– open Firefox and type:

about:config

in the address bar.

– search for:

dom.storage.enabled
and change its configuration from “false” to “true” double-clicking on it.

After this fast change in the Firefox’s configuration menu I was able to attend the Google course but….. I am conscious that my privacy is a little bit less protected because now Google can store up to 5 MB of content on my browser. In fact, before HTML 5 we were used to “cookies” and we were able to “manage” (better: erase) them also if, as the LSO Flash cookies, they were more persistent than usual. Moreover in the old html times, the space available for cookies on your local browser was 4 KB (yes… KB) but now, in the Html 5 era, a single website can easily manage and permanently store till 5 MB on your browser. And this is the reason why I decided to protect my privacy disabling the DOM Storage on Firefox and this is also the reason because I will disable DOM Storage as soon as I complete the Google course…
DOM STORAGE
If you are not a simple user but you prefer to directly and consciously operate on the Firefox configuration to improve your privacy level, you would read this interesting post by BestVPN.
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References:

Once again about cookies, supercookies and Flash cookies… How to better protect Firefox, your Linux OS and.. you!

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In a previous post I already suggested to use HTTPS Everywhere and HTTPS Finder to better protect your privacy on the web. Today I would like to focus your attention on the privacy risks caused by cookies.

Some of them can track your internet activity also when you have logged off from the websites that created them. In few words, some cookies can actively support the creation of a quite punctual profile of your interests and share these information with third parties without you know if your data will be anonymised and correctly stored.

Internet tracking is actual and silent and antivirus software are not the best solution to manage them because every day new types of apparently harmless cookies and supercookies are created and spread into our computers. Cookies usually don’t directly affect your internet browsing but they are a real risk if you want to protect your privacy. A good VPN service (e.g. one that does not link your payment to your “new” assigned VPN IP) could be the best solution but flash cookies, evercookies (a particular type of zombie cookies which are able to geometrically clone themselves outside the original folder where they were stored) could reveal your IP and your habits, just after you disconnect your OS from the VPN shield.

To improve your privacy you can start to combine your VPN with some particular Firefox add-on as Self-Destructing Cookies (for the regular cookies) and BetterPrivacy which has been developed to “search and destroy” Flash cookies.

To improve your privacy, never forget that  you can tune your Firefox Privacy settings also using  Secure Sanitizer which wipe the browser cache in a stronger way than Firefox itself.

Last but not least, don’t forget to “waste” some minutes of your time and use BleachBit after every internet session or every time you shutdown your computer. Better to be slow than sorry!