Wanna Protect Your Online Privacy? Make Some Noise
Posted: 04-19-2017 01:28 AM
Internet Noise acts like a browser extension but is really just a website that auto-opens tabs based on random Google searches.
A thirty-year-old programmer, Dan Schultz, launched Internet Noise in direct response to Congress making it legal for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to track and sell your personal activity online.
For ISPs or anyone they’ve sold your data to, Internet Noise tries to throw them off your trail by creating a fake path to follow. By muddying your online identity, advertisers can’t accurately profile you and authorities can’t accurately surveil you.
This signal-jamming offers just one modest example of the larger theory of obfuscation, the idea that if you can’t disappear online at least you can hide yourself in a miasma of noise.
Schultz says the main point for now is its use as a form of digital protest and to raise awareness. Still, the project has potential to evolve into a real privacy tool.
In the meantime, besides being a bother by filling their databases with noise, if you are genuinely interested in thwarting the tracking efforts of your ISP and advertisers Schultz offers an ascending list of sound suggestions at his site.
https://slifty.github.io/internet_noise/
A thirty-year-old programmer, Dan Schultz, launched Internet Noise in direct response to Congress making it legal for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to track and sell your personal activity online.
For ISPs or anyone they’ve sold your data to, Internet Noise tries to throw them off your trail by creating a fake path to follow. By muddying your online identity, advertisers can’t accurately profile you and authorities can’t accurately surveil you.
This signal-jamming offers just one modest example of the larger theory of obfuscation, the idea that if you can’t disappear online at least you can hide yourself in a miasma of noise.
Schultz says the main point for now is its use as a form of digital protest and to raise awareness. Still, the project has potential to evolve into a real privacy tool.
In the meantime, besides being a bother by filling their databases with noise, if you are genuinely interested in thwarting the tracking efforts of your ISP and advertisers Schultz offers an ascending list of sound suggestions at his site.
https://slifty.github.io/internet_noise/