How the Cookie(s) Monster, will Find Your LocationWhile You Browse Online
Opt Out and say NO to Online Cookies
After you escape and find your last to second to last location, you will need to address the cookie problem.
Once it’s a habbit for you to follow the other OPSEC Principles,
- cookies (online trackers) will be one of the often overlooked OPSEC/INFOSEC practices you’ll need to master.
These little buggers will eventually (I can’t give you an exact time line), give away your location to your abuser/stalker, by you simply using the internet.
Luckily, you can protect yourself and greatly reduce the information you give online advertisers about you.
●Habbits, tools, extensions and mindfulness, will be the keys to your long term security 🔒
Firstly, What Are Online Cookies and How Do They Find Where You Live?
Perplexity AI
“Data brokers use cookies to track your online behavior”
Which creates “detailed user profiles”, and allows them to “aggregate this information and sell it to advertisers and other companies.”
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“Cookies enable behavioral advertising by allowing companies to build an online "persona"
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Cookies will collect: “personal details..like IP addresses, location, and browsing history” which build your “user profile”.
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Impact for Victims?
Your stalker/abuser finding you easier when they google your name,
or use more powerful people finder search tools (which collect information from these online advertisers).
Target Audience:
- Current stalking/domestic violence victims (maybe you’ve covered your other bases )
- Everyday people who want a little more privacy
1st Step: Manual Selection
Choose No and or Deselect the Others
When first going on a site, sometimes you will get a “pop up”, asking you to consent to sharing your information with the webiste.
Although it will be tempting to click “accept and continue”,
🛑 I strongly advise you Not to.
This data the site collects will likely be sold and eventually leak to data broker and people finder websites.
- Manually go through, and “deselect” all the options I allows you to deselect
- There will still be some “required/non optional” collection, but, it is less.
→Principle: Less is Better
What Else Can I do to Reduse what Cookies can collect about me?
Sub Category: Browser settings
Each browser is set up a little differently.
Act like Dora the explorer, and explorer all the privacy, saftey, data, and security settings!
-Privacy and Security -
Look through all the options, the stricter the better.
-“Do not track” requests (not all sites will follow through on this)
-“block 3rd party cookies”
-Turn OFF options to make browsing better, easier or more convenient
-Choose Enhanced Protection
-Choose Https Only
-Choose Enhanced Privacy/Tracking Protection
Best Privacy and Security Browsers for Victims
Basic: Firefox*
*this is likely the most functional one, and nordvpn.com, rates it as the best.
Intermediate: Brave
High Level: Mullvad*
*it has an option to “hop” through 2 different servers, comes from the highly rated Mullvad VPN, and Collaborated with Tor, to create it.
When you go with lesser known search engines, there is sometimes a decreased performance, functionality issues with websites and so forth.
-Duck Duck Go, is another good privacy oriented search engine.
Extensions and Tools
The next step, is to use a couple of extensions for our browser that reduce the amount of information that advertisers cookies and the internet can collect from you while you’re browsing.
If for some reason you have to use Chrome or Microsoft edge, these extensions will help you.
Perplexity AI:
“Privacy Badger: This browser extension automatically blocks invisible trackers and third-party cookies.”
“DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials: This extension blocks trackers and forces websites to use encrypted connections when available”
“Ghostery: Blocks ads and trackers, and provides detailed information about who is tracking you”
Social media
Any information you put on your social media profile, such as:
-Where you Work, Live
-Work/Your title
-Your first, last name, nick name
-Clubs, Hobbies
-Number, Email
All this information can be collected by advertisers and then sold to the data brokers.
(And it will come up in a pwoplw search site)
- The games and apps that you play on these profiles or through these profiles will also be collecting information about you too.
If you’re not a stalking victim or domestic violence victim, this really may not matter to you.
If you are, all these little things start collecting information to build up that profile about you, thus leading to where you live and work.
Use Three Emails
And think about your email name and where you post it too.
Any time you give out an email to a store (which I don’t recommend) or use an email for social media profile,My strong recommendation is:
-each of these is a different email
-the emails that you give do not have any personal identifiable information about you
-you have one email that is for just stores, that you only use for stores and nothing else
Use 3 Numbers
Use the same methodology with your phone numbers.
-You can use Google Voice a text me number and then your main number.
- Your phone is a prepaid cash phone that does not have your name attached to it
To Cover the Rest of Your Bases:
Sign up for a Data Removal Service
