Chrome cookies

[CaptTom]

239 cookies set when I opened NYT in Chrome. Yes there is a list, but you delete one at a time. I think that was mentioned by OP.
The rest of the solution is to know which cookie(s) is used to limit the reader.

It's not that simple. Did you ever wonder what EACH of those 239 cookies is used for?

I'm very skeptical of anything the tin-foil-hat crowd raises alarms about. But frankly the extent to which our individual web activity is tracked is starting to creep me out. For the record, I spent 36 years in IT, so I think I sort of understand this stuff.

Take a simple example. Look at the cookies this site uses. There's one from FaceBook.

Somewhere on this page there's a small (often invisibly small) link to an image from the FaceBook web site. Your browser saw that link in this page and dutifully sent a "get" request to FaceBook.

The header of that request contains a ton of information about your IP address and browser. It also contains all the cookies your browser has stored from other visits to the FaceBook servers.

Now, just about every site has a "like us on FaceBook" icon, or possibly an invisible image just for tracking. So FaceBook gets a slew of information about you, and all the cookies it ever sent you, every time you visit almost ANY site.

Basically, FaceBook can now track virtually everything you do on line, whether you're signed on to anything or not.

And it's not just FaceBook. There are lots of tracking services out there. Web sites make money by including those invisible links on all their pages. Most sites have dozens of them. Some have hundreds.

You can start to see why some folks are getting paranoid about it. Personally, I find it more of a curiosity, and just a little creepy. It's become a bit of a game to try to avoid the targeted ads based on my browsing history. Clearing most cookies on exit is easy and goes a long way toward that goal.

 

[braumeister]

I also recommend installing Ghostery, which blocks most of that stuff automatically.

 

[ERD50]

... access to serious journalism will now be limited. ...

And where is this "serious journalism"?

Quite seriously, I've pretty much stopped reading the news, it is a combination of poorly written and biased - intentional, or ignorant, or lazy, or just 'click bait' with almost total lack of context.

Ergo, I now join the vast majority of ignorant citizens, subject to the loudest and most unreliable information sources. Dumb and happy. A new member of the proletariat.

Maybe not. I think following what passes for news makes people misinformed, which can be worse than being uninformed. Misinformed people push their lawmakers for policies that make no sense, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

My approach now is, if I see/hear some news headline/brief that I feel is important, I start searching out the source material, and see if I can form an opinion based on source material. If I can't, I will ignore the news item as useless, because it probably is.

Most of C-Span is also on youtube (youtube has a better user interface). Unedited, just captures the event from start to finish. I have watched some of these events, then seen the headlines from what most people would call 'serious journalism', and the headline totally misrepresents the event. They take 30 seconds out of 30 minutes, ignore the 30 minutes of positive, take a maybe neutral 30 second clip out of context and spin it negative for a headline, that gives the impression the entire 30 minutes was a negative attack.

You can find source material for much of what is happening. When the middleman isn't providing value, or worse, degrading the product, eliminate the middleman, go to the source.

After you witness that a few times, you just shake your head at what passes for 'journalism'. You are better off without that kind of 'journalism'.

-ERD50

 

[sengsational]

I also recommend installing Ghostery, which blocks most of that stuff automatically.

Ghostery is good that it blocks the myriad of trackers out there, but the Ghostery results are getting sold back to the companies attempting to do the tracking!

If all you want to do is block tracking sites, privacy badger is lighter weight and it's supported by the EFF (an organization with a clear mission that's in the interest of privacy).

 

[hesperus]

I've been getting around some paywalls using a chrome extension called 'referrer control'. Basically with this tool, you can Control the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis to get around the limitations they impose. The Wall Street Journal is notorious for requiring readers to subscribe for article access. You can get around that by a copy-and-paste into Google — but that can get annoying after a while. All I did was create a rule that automatically sets Google as the referrer when I click on a link. It will unlock the paywall and save you the trouble of having to Google an article's headline each time.

 

[braumeister]

Ghostery is good that it blocks the myriad of trackers out there, but the Ghostery results are getting sold back to the companies attempting to do the tracking!

If all you want to do is block tracking sites, privacy badger is lighter weight and it's supported by the EFF (an organization with a clear mission that's in the interest of privacy).

Yes, but it only works with Chrome AFAIK.

 

[Senator]

239 cookies set when I opened NYT in Chrome. Yes there is a list, but you delete one at a time. I think that was mentioned by OP.
The rest of the solution is to know which cookie(s) is used to limit the reader.

Each window/tab opened will have a different set of cookies. Delete them all. You are only deleting the cookies for that particular website. Cookies are not important, they will be reset on loading the page, but with new dates and counts.

 

[imoldernu]

Wow... Thank you all... This will teach me some humility.

About Senator's suggestion... Had no idea... Duh... It works...

... and congrats on becoming Official!!!

Re: Ghostery... used it for a while, but found it a little difficult for this little brain, and... it didn't block the popup videos, which I despise.

Re: passwords... will give the automatic sites a try...

About news in general... I have 187 links to different sites... Obviously don't use them all, but when a subject comes up, I can go to those sites that will offer biased "news" for both sides of the coin. Am addicted to CSpan, 1,2 and 3, NPR, BBC, and Places like the New Yorker... but spend plenty of time on NewsMax, FreeSpeech, MSNBC, CNN, HuffPost, Alternet, NYT, Washington Post, Washington Times... LA Times, Drudge, Aljazeera America, and Asia Times... among many others... I'd say that's a pretty good mix.

Points up why ER bans politics. A very good thing. I escaped to here, after several years of posting on the issues, on other sites... until (along with what I think is happening to our country) courtesy, gentility, and forbearance went by the boards., and "conversation" became impossible.

Thanks again... never too late to learn...

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

And where is this "serious journalism"?

-ERD50

David Fahrenthold has done a great job covering the Trump family for the Washington Post.

In 2016 USA Today used two ambitious data-gathering efforts to turn up 9,000 teachers across the nation who should have been flagged for past disciplinary offenses but were not.

Here's the lead from a May 23, 2016, article in the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail: "Over five years, the nation's largest drug wholesalers flooded notorious 'pill mill' pharmacies in West Virginia's smallest towns and poorest counties with hundreds of thousands of painkillers, according to court records the companies had sought to keep secret for more than a year."

Want more? Go to The Pulitzer Prizes

 

[Senator]

Wow... Thank you all... This will teach me some humility.

About Senator's suggestion... Had no idea... Duh... It works...

I am glad I could help out. Your posts have definitely helped me get the confidence to retire.

 

[target2019]

Imoldernu,
Here is a more complete answer for your question. Previous Chrome allowed site cookies to be deleted in a few clicks. Later versions of Chrome have changed the interface, so you're wondering how to delete cookies for one site only, and not have to delete all, or click 239 cookies one by one.

There are extensions that do this, but it may be better to go beyond the hood to see what is going on. An extension will do this in one click, buy you then have to carry that extension, and it may break in the future.

Here is my method:

1. Go to site in Chrome
2. F12 to open Developer Tools
3. At top of developer window look for Application (or Resources in older versions)
4. Expand Cookies on left
5. Right-click on site of interest, and "Clear"

Yes, the developer interface is quite complex, but not so difficult given the steps above. I have not tested this for your problem, as I do not read 10 articles or whatever the limit is.