John Cryptome welcomes criticism and publishes it, righteous emails a tonic. Don't know why you think Google and PayPal are the only ones grabbing data about Cryptome and have been since day one. We post better privacy and security advice on Cryptome than to warn about the easy targets. We began from day one to warn about Cryptome being spied on. The story you spread is not altogether truthful and fails to warn about far more serious privacy and security hazards. What you say about Cryptome is more suitable for public interest groups, EFF, ACLU, FAS and so on. As far as I can see, none warn their readers about pervasive data grabbing on readers, membership and contributors by authorities and provided by those inside the orgs to remain on the right side of the law and maintaining "reputability." One might wonder if there is complicity to keep this complicity and vulnerability quiet, call it the Polish Bishop move. EFF's stance on giving up usage logs should be a scandal. Maybe someday the public service orgs will reveal the price they pay for dissimulation about trustworthiness and "non-profit" legitimacy and tax-rightoff attractiveness. Google and PayPal can be reverse-panopticoned as easily as the authorities, the non-profits and everybody else. Regards, John
A1: Hi, I noted with interest the John v. John on cryptome privacy here: http://cryptome.org/toad-dis.htm However, Cryptome's response is rather muddy. That is, it could be written more clearly. For example, the cookies Gillmore describes are a result of using ad services to pay for bandwith, I'd imagine. Users can easily use an anonymizer like Tor to reduce this kind of threat. And what is EFF's stance on giving up usage logs? Are they doing something similar? Those are the questions readers are asking. -Joe __________ In April 2003 EFF co-sponsored an initiative to develop policy on usage log but it petered out not long after. EFF's current policy on usage logs is not available. http://cryptome.org/usage-logs.htm Cryptome has advocated keeping no usage logs: http://cryptome.org/no-logs.htm For more, search Google on EFF and usage logs. Usage logs are the dirty secret of the Internet, no site wants to give up spying on users so the hoary argument persists thats logs are essential to system administration -- the same argument government and companies use to spy on citizens, workers and competitors.
A2: There are some easy ways to remove and obscure who you are from google/google analytics: The "Customize Google" extension used with Firefox will prevent cookie tracking by Google's servers. See attached screen shot.
![[Image]](toad-dis-google.jpg)
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/743/
Also:
"TrackMeNot is a lightweight browser extension that helps protect web
searchers from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines."
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/
Very handy tools.
A3: Hello John (Gilmore), I don't know how you are managing to get Google and PayPal cookies when you visit the cryptome.org home page - doing so does not install any cookies in my browser (Safari 2.04) even if I change preferences to Accept Cookies "Always", rather than "Only from sites you navigate to" which is what I usually have it set to. If you figure out the reason then please post an update somewhere, I find it hard to believe that the fault lies with the cryptome site.