imgur has google trackers and more.
you can use anonfiles, anonfiles has an image preview and no trackers attached
Google sets cookies, there are also other ways.
Point is: anonfiles has no trackers attached, it only sets 2 cookies, one userid and another option one, that's it.
VPN doesn't protect you from getting tracked, in fact it sets up a red crosshair for agencies.
You can of course block google trackers, but there are others, and I'm sure that not all anons block all of these.
Also look at it this way:
the problem is that google can see where you are surfing to.
You visit imgur (they detect you via that cookie, that they set, and as I said there are also other ways, cookie is just the obvious and easy way), then you visit google.com, afterwards you visit some other place, that also has a google tracker on it.
So now, without you logging in, they see that one person visited all these places, they see which webpages you visited. Now imagine that there is a site that you log in or register, and it pops up a google captcha, once again google knows that the browser that got this captcha also visited these other sites before.
I haven't looked into captcha implementation regarding security implications, but I wouldn't be surprised if google could leech the e-mail address, and even if they can't, you never know which of the websites share data.
Facebook will surely share its data with google, and facebook sets trackers too. Amazon does the same. Again: would be very surprised if they didn't share data.
So YOU logging into amazon using that browser may get them ID on who the person was visiting all these other sites.
That way you can also figure users over days, months, years, what they did and when.
I myself have my browser configured so that it deletes all except for a few cookies when closing it down. 99% of the users do not have this set up like that, but even that doesn't stop them completely. It makes it harder for them though, because every time I open my browser it looks like a new user to them.
For example if they have figured you out once, they may even look for people who block cookies or whatever or visit a certain list of sites, and identify you that way and combine data of multiple days as well.
btw. this even is true for 8kun, because Jim thought it would be a good idea to support youtube embed, which means you contact youtube on every single site refresh here as soon as at least one youtube video got embedded.
Browsers typically also sent over the referer header, which means google sees that we are on 8kun and they can of course once again combine that with all the other data that they collect.
Jim could have implemented that in a way that would have made it so youtube is not contacted unless you press play, but he didn't. Maybe even intentionally to make this place look controlled, idk.
That way would have been: get thumbnail image from youtube directly, store it on 8kun, and then serve that image from 8kun for youtube embeds.
Some sites to something similar with the facebook buttons.
Once again, most sites simply add it, which is another facebook tracker, because even if you don't press it, the image file is requested from facebook servers. That's how it typically works.
I got all of thie shit blocked on my computer, but most haven't. I'm flying under the radar, at least as good as I can.
>Always use private browsing mode
No, that's not it.
I got cookies set up that way, but some cookies are kept, for sites that I want to remember me.
Also got NoScript and other plugins.
NoScript is a god sent, because it will stop any scripts from getting executed UNLESS I allow it.
If Google is allowed to execute scripts, they can do tons of shit to fingerprint you, cookie or not.
most browsers are built in a way that it's difficult to set that up, I mean it's not obvious. Most of the time people will set it up so that all cookies are kept, or set that certain site cookies expire when closing down the browser. That's impossible to maintain, because there are way too many sites, and google loves to add new domains for setting cookies too.
I'm basically abusing the settings.
"keep until I close browser"
setup exceptions
certain sites: "allow" (not allow for session)
In any case could have implemented it properly.
Atm it's not well implemented, although to be fair almost no site implements it properly.
Not that yt embed really matters anyway
I doubt the Qs in the videoids are random, which means Q has at least some control over yt, same is definitely true for twatter.
just checked, my browser doesn't send out referer on these requests, which is a good thing.
It's still not that difficult to track, especially when videos with very low view counts are embedded.