zlacker

[return to "Justice Department withdraws FBI subpoena for USA Today records ID'ing readers"]
1. dredmo+Lh[view] [source] 2021-06-06 00:58:14
>>lxm+(OP)
In an age where newspapers were bought at news stands for cash, identity of the reader was entirely anonymous.

In an age where printed periodicals were delivered by subscription, the subscriber information was available (and yes, often tracked by local and federal law enforcement), but not the specifics of what articles were read.

Today, with Web-based document delivery and Javascript instrumentation, the specifics of who reads what articles, time on page, sections read, interactions, shares, and more, are available not just to the publishere but advertisers, any entities hacking into or accessing their systems, app developers, and more.

And, yes, law enforcement, whether under warrant, subpoena, or ... other methods.

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2. qualud+rw[view] [source] 2021-06-06 03:55:38
>>dredmo+Lh
You can get around that if you search for link urls in archive sites.

Someone usually will have archived the article there.

If you feel a bit more ambitious you could make a bot that runs on a vps somewhere and automatically scrapes news articles.

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3. dredmo+ex[view] [source] 2021-06-06 04:05:40
>>qualud+rw
Tor seems to work reasonably well, except that many mainstream media sites block, throttle, or CAPTCHA it.
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4. nuker+KC[view] [source] 2021-06-06 05:41:07
>>dredmo+ex
VPN plus incognito (private) browser window is easier than tor and roughly same protection level. That is for general use, not for hardcore anonymity.
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5. dredmo+nI[view] [source] 2021-06-06 07:21:26
>>nuker+KC
History's shown that for numerous VPN providers that's not the case.

Chief value of (public/general) VPNs seems to be 1) accessing region-zoned content or 2) protection against local-segment interception.

The benefit of 2) is balanced against the fairly strong probability that the VPN provider itself is heavily surveilled or actively aiding in monitoring activities.

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6. qualud+Ye1[view] [source] 2021-06-06 14:29:26
>>dredmo+nI
With some vpn providers you can look them up in court records to see if there are any mentions of them keeping logs.
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