Remember when all we had to worry about was the struggle between good and evil? It used to be Windows vs. Mac. Or, legal vs. illegal.
Here we are in the 21st century and we have more struggles than ever.
It’s not illegal (yet) but more and more companies try to track what we do while we’re online. Privacy is becoming an ever important issue. How can you keep the trackers from tracking you? Without going into the expense and effort of using an anonymous virtual private network, one step goes a long way to reducing your exposure and visibility online.
To paraphrase, ‘cookies don’t track people. People track people.’ But one way to stop tracking is the free Do Not Track Plus app.
DNT+ is a browser tool which blocks most of the cookies you’ll pick up when visiting web sites using Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on the Mac.
The way it works seems simple enough. When you visit a web site which drops a cookie into your Mac’s browser, DNT+ prevents that cookie from communicating information back to the sender.
You get some control over which sites you will allow to track you’re online presence with their cookies. This is handy because many online shopping sites require that cookies be enabled.
In Safari, DNT+ places a little icon in the status bar which displays the number of cookies being used to track your browser. Click on the status bar icon and it displays more detail.
From what I can see on my Mac, DNT+ stops cookies from most sites with ad tracking, analytics, and even social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
To see how many cookies are in Safari already, open Safari’s Preferences, select the Privacy button. Right below the Remove All Website Data button is the number of cookies Safari has accepted.
DNT+ simply stops Safari from sending cookie information back to their originating site. Not bad for free, right?
When it comes to all these Mac tools that help us secure more privacy online, the thing I worry about is the answer to this nagging little question, “Who monitors the monitors?“
Darron Spohn says
I downloaded this a couple of days ago and it seems to be working well. I always knew companies used cookies to track what we do online, but was shocked to find just how pervasive this is. Don’t really know if this software is helping me in any way, but I at least feel better knowing people are fighting back against privacy invasion, even if by baby steps.
ChasMac says
Most Mac users will be stunned to learn how many cookies are stuffed into Safari. Each of those cookies provides information to someone, somewhere. If you’ve never checked, open Safari’s Preferences and click the Privacy button. You’ll see the first subject is Cookies And Other Website Data and a button; Remove All Website Data. Right below the button will be the number of sites which store cookies on Safari. I’ll bet it’s in the hundreds.
Darron Spohn says
Mine was in the thousands. I removed them all. Had to login to some discussion forums later, but that is less time consuming than deleting cookies manually.