this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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privacy

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Big tech and governments are monitoring and recording your eating activities. c/Privacy provides tips and tricks to protect your privacy against global surveillance.

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Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit (www.404media.co)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by streetfestival@lemmy.ca to c/privacy@lemmy.ca
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This is about cookie banners on websites

There was another time I got into a very serious ontological discussion with a fairly senior engineer about what the difference was between taxes and fines and they didn’t understand there was a difference,” he said.

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[–] DisgruntledGorillaGang@reddthat.com -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Your ISP and browser can see everything you do, but your search engine can only see what you're doing when you're actively on the site, and through cookies. Same with those other sites. Using incognito absolutely helps with that.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's plain false. With a VPN enabled, the ISP can see data volume and time stamps, and what VPN server you're connected to. Nothing else.

Your browser, depends on the browser. Chrome, Edge, etc., yeah, they're watching everything you do. An open-source privacy-focused browser with maximum privacy settings enabled is not watching as much, if anything at all.

And incognito doesn't hide your fingerprint from search engines or websites. It's basically worthless for privacy. All it does is clear cookies, caches, and browsing history from the local device.

[–] DisgruntledGorillaGang@reddthat.com 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I was talking about this statement:

Private tabs do nothing for the backend, your ISP, browser, search engine, and any sites you visit, can still see everything you do. All private tabs do is they don't save history or cookies on your frontend.

Obviously if you use a VPN your ISP can't see it.

If you use a private browser they're not watching you, but again, your browser can easily log all that information if they are inclined to.

I didn't say anything about fingerprinting and neither did you. Cookies are a large part of tracking, I never said it was the only way they're tracking. But if I go on one site and they fingerprint me, and then I go on another site and they fingerprint me, the first site doesn't automatically know I was on the second site because of the same fingerprint. They would know because of the cookies.