Jae

Modern web & Cookies

Cookies were a good idea.
Don’t get me wrong, when used for good, it is really practical and useful but what happens when you give this kind of tool to idiot people?

The current web is a shithole, almost all websites have tons of javascript, cookies and more with the sole purpose of tracking you to know everything about you, this is why I don’t trust the web anymore and want to use less and less browser “applications” and replace them with easier & better console alternatives.
For instance, I am not playing videos in my browser anymore, I instead use the MPV media player with youtube-dl which does a really good job (just playing the video without tracking and ads).

As you saw on the previous screenshot, lots of websites are using way too much cookies. We can all agree absolutely no app needs 83 cookies to function correctly, in fact, youtube pretty much works perfectly without any cookies and lots of other websites do.

Here is some of my recommendations:

Step 1, block all third-parties cookies by default.

In Firefox, all you have to do is go to the settings, “Privacy & Security” tab.
If you are using chrome, then I can’t do much for you.

Step 2, download uMatrix and block that pesky javascript.

Some of you may be familiar with the Firefox add-on “Noscript”. Only problem with this add-on: the customisation is almost null and you can’t really choose what to let pass and what to block.
With uMatrix, you can block everything, javascript, cookies, frames and even CSS and medias.
uMatrix is a great tool I will never stop to recommend.

Also, while I’m here, I want to make some promotion to the Reverse Eagle collective that aims to hunt OSS projects using non-ethical tracking solutions (google analytics/tags manager) with more privacy-friendly ones.

I know, this article was more me giving out a rent against modern websites but the next article will be better, I promise.
I hope you liked this article and if you did, don’t forget to subscribe with the RSS feed so you won’t miss any future posts.
I’ll see you next time!