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A thought on privacy
Mar. 4th, 2012 09:54 am(NB: I'm not an expert in either privacy or web technology, so this may be unworkable rubbish, but I'll throw it out here anyway.)
I've been following the recent discussion about Google and privacy - in particular, privacy related to general web browsing - and my impression of the discussion is:
- most of the advice on privacy protection relates to ways to prevent Google (and others!) from capturing your browsing habits
- Google put a lot of effort into capturing your browsing habits
- ergo, protecting your privacy this way is pretty inconvenient.
I wonder if there's anything to be gained by turning the problem on its head: instead of trying to stop Google et al. from capturing info on your browsing habits, make that data capture worthless. Something like this:
When you want to browse the web, instead of opening Firefox/Chrome/etc. directly, you do so through an app - let's call it "Chaff" - that lets you call these browsers and enter data into them.
But when you ask Chaff to open $BROWSER, it opens multiple instances of that browser - let's say five. One of these is visible to you, and you interact with it through Chaff (ideally the interface would be transparent enough that the experience is just like using the vanilla browser). The other four run in the background, usually hidden from view.
When you enter/click on a URL in the visible instance, Chaff automatically generates a similar request in each of the hidden instances - but for a different, randomly-chosen website.
For example, suppose the site you REALLY want to see is www.smashthegovernment.org. When you type this request into your browser (via Chaff), the visible instance pulls up that site. It goes on your browser history, and you get whatever tracking cookies are associated with it.
But meanwhile, in four other browser instances, Chaff is also opening www.senioradministrativenurses.xxx , www.betterhomesandgardens.com, www.bankofamerica.com, and www.redcross.org. All of those go into the browser/cookie history too. Whenever you click on a link within smashthegovernment.org, Chaff automatically "clicks" on a link in each of the other instances.
The effect of this is that while your browsing history is logged, the log also contains a great deal of bogus information. A human or bot looking at that history can't easily tell whether you're an anti-government activist, a nurse fetishist, or just a gardener.
( Some technical considerations. )
I've been following the recent discussion about Google and privacy - in particular, privacy related to general web browsing - and my impression of the discussion is:
- most of the advice on privacy protection relates to ways to prevent Google (and others!) from capturing your browsing habits
- Google put a lot of effort into capturing your browsing habits
- ergo, protecting your privacy this way is pretty inconvenient.
I wonder if there's anything to be gained by turning the problem on its head: instead of trying to stop Google et al. from capturing info on your browsing habits, make that data capture worthless. Something like this:
When you want to browse the web, instead of opening Firefox/Chrome/etc. directly, you do so through an app - let's call it "Chaff" - that lets you call these browsers and enter data into them.
But when you ask Chaff to open $BROWSER, it opens multiple instances of that browser - let's say five. One of these is visible to you, and you interact with it through Chaff (ideally the interface would be transparent enough that the experience is just like using the vanilla browser). The other four run in the background, usually hidden from view.
When you enter/click on a URL in the visible instance, Chaff automatically generates a similar request in each of the hidden instances - but for a different, randomly-chosen website.
For example, suppose the site you REALLY want to see is www.smashthegovernment.org. When you type this request into your browser (via Chaff), the visible instance pulls up that site. It goes on your browser history, and you get whatever tracking cookies are associated with it.
But meanwhile, in four other browser instances, Chaff is also opening www.senioradministrativenurses.xxx , www.betterhomesandgardens.com, www.bankofamerica.com, and www.redcross.org. All of those go into the browser/cookie history too. Whenever you click on a link within smashthegovernment.org, Chaff automatically "clicks" on a link in each of the other instances.
The effect of this is that while your browsing history is logged, the log also contains a great deal of bogus information. A human or bot looking at that history can't easily tell whether you're an anti-government activist, a nurse fetishist, or just a gardener.
( Some technical considerations. )
