[HLUG] Herefordshire Digest, Vol 1902, Issue 1

[Kevin Dontenville]

Hi Geoff 

I run Jessie on my main desktop and other distros here and there and in many places I do get sign-in requests as features loading on the page are called eg voting or comments etc. They don't usually stop me playing or accessing the information but they do obstruct and annoy. 

I also see some ads and trackers want to connect you back to an account so they can link information collected across platforms and services to help enrich your browsing experience with more targeted ads or similar! 

I use adblockers in most places until I feel happy to support or trust a site that depends on ads but that is now difficult to judge. Part of the new wave of malware is embedded in ads and few sites have any control over what is delivered by the platforms that supply the revenue ads to them, other than the general type being appropriate. Most of the platforms check ad content when accepting an ad but the ad can change at any point, eg the advertiser may be hacked or the ad may be specifically edited at the landing or on the code that pulls data in etc. 

I use ghostery to check and block third party cookies and tracking and several versions of the ad-blockers on different browsers. I also use TOR browser http://torproject.org/ at times as the annoyance factors rise although I tend to stick to non video sites for speed and it is also then you notice the subtle use of flash on sites to get and write info from/to your pc to identify you and sites visited uniquely using the license features. 

Generally I use firefox and the add-ons mentioned and I get faster, cleaner, safer browsing. Chrome appears faster but it prevents a some of the protection from working as effectively which is down to judgement of the user. When firefox changes next it is expected to use the isolation of tabs/sites like chrome which will make it faster but use more memory though increase safety/robustness more which will be a good thing. 

Not sure if that would help you specifically but its the closest I have of the sort of experience you mention. 

BTW FASTER INTERNET! We recently got upgraded to 20Mb/s ADSL2+ up here so we get 18Mb/s down, 1Mb/s up and pings of 15ms to major sites - the engineer said the fibre was in ready for next year when we can get 80Mb/s down, 20Mb/s up. North Herefordshire seems to be making some progress, anyone else seen improvements? 

Kind regards 

Kevin