Anonymity and Privacy On The Internet

These days on the internet it has become almost impossible to remain anonymous. Almost every site you visit will want to track you in some way or another. This is usually for advertising purposes and is most commonly done by using cookies. Most of the time they just store your approximate location, a list of visited sites, and a list of keywords. These are then used to show you targeted advertisements that you are more likely to be interested in. Not particularly sinister right? However when you consider the implications of this it is rather disturbing. It is the internet equivalent of them opening up your mail and having a rummage for anything interesting. The worst part is that that this is only roughly the limits of the "legitimate" companies tracking you and looking at your data. There are also websites out there that can place things called supercookies on your computer (unfortunately some "legitimate" companies also do this although it is rare).

Supercookies are cookies that are really difficult or in some cases near downright impossible to get rid of. With regular cookies you have the option to clear them from your computer so that they will stop collecting data about you; supercookies, on the other hand, spread themselves to every place on your computer that they possibly can. If you try to delete the supercookie and it exists anywhere else on your machine then the second the remaining copy of the supercookie is activated it will restore every copy that you had previously deleted. It's like a cancerous tumour: unless you get rid of it all it will just grow back.

Another method that websites can use to track you as an individual is your browser. You may use a very common browser like chrome or firefox, but there are many different ways they can narrow down who you are by the parts of your browser and system. Use any plugins? Have any custom fonts installed? They can check to see how many people have that exact combination of plugins, system fonts, browser, and many other things. The end result is that your fairly unique browser setup can be used to track you as a unique user, and even if your browser is fairly generic they can still check your system fonts, operating system version, etc. there's almost no escaping it. This tracking method means that they can even track you through proxies.

So now comes the big question: Is it actually possible to be truly and absolutely anonymous on the internet? The short answer is no. There is no 100% certain way of guaranteeing that you cannot be tracked on the internet in some way, shape, or form short of cutting yourself off from 99% of the features of all websites (in which case you may as well not be using the internet at all). However there are ways to make it very difficult (and in some cases logistically unviable) for websites and people to track you and trick them into receiving at least some false data. First of all you should disable things like flash and java; if you need them then set them to run only on demand, like if you need to use a website feature that requires flash you could manually unblock that flash element on the page without unblocking any others. Secondly you can use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or a proxy like Tor to mask your IP address and make websites think that it is different; although this doesn't always work if the site asks your pc to provide its IP address using something like Java. Finally another thing that you can do to feed websites false information instead of yours is to run your web browser off a virtual machine. This way you can have all of your custom fonts, browsers, etc. on your computer but it will only report those on the VM; it will also report your operating system as being that of the VM. There are also other methods of reducing the amount you are tracked like using plugins to force https on all sites and filter out specific cookies, etc.

These methods on their own may not stop someone if they are already specifically trying to track you, however amongst the millions of people on the internet these methods make it pretty hard to identify you. Our greatest defence against tracking is numbers (especially when it comes to multiple people connecting through the same VPN). There are too many people on the internet to all be tracked individually and so it is usually easy to hide within the crowd by making yourself harder to track than the others. This makes it logistically inefficient to track you and gather any specific personal data as they could probably track 3 other people before they could find your IP through a proxy like Tor if they could find it at all. If nothing else you can inconvenience the companies that try to track you and increase the costs for the processing power required for their nosiness.

Personally I believe that anonymity on the web to a certain extent is a good thing. There are many who believe that anonymity can be used for illegal purposes and so a breach of personal privacy is justified. I find it odd that just because it's on the internet a breach of personal privacy is seen as rational and acceptable. We wouldn't want people watching over our shoulders constantly in real life as we read magazines, read our mail, or have a conversation with a friend. What makes people think that we would be ok with it just because we are on the internet?

Sources and related links:
https://abine.com/people_guide.php
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/168418-microsoft-google-working-on-super-cookies-to-track-your-behavior-everywhere
http://weknowmemes.com/tag/but-as-a-bundle-we-form-a-mighty-faggot/

Meme Culture On The Internet

As the internet evolved over time it has developed its own culture. Within this internet culture ideas that would, in real life, take a long time to get around and fade into obscurity before getting very far instead spread quickly across wide communities on the internet. As a result of this they become part of the internet's "meme culture". A meme is an idea that spreads from person to person within a culture (in the case of the internet a meme is usually a humorous or funny image); the internet amplifies this effect due to its ability to convey communication quickly to a large number of people. The result of this is that memes go through several stages very quickly whilst surging through the internet's population. The five main stages that can be seen on most internet sites are:

Discovery/creation: The potential meme is either "discovered" from existing content or created by someone (usually a web comic or video maker). It is then posted on a website and potentially adopted by an internet community. Some people attempt to promote things that they believe should be memes and these usually fail as they are seen to be "forced memes".

Adaptation/adoption: The meme is adapted to conform with the rest of the internet's culture and is adopted into the meme culture. The adaption can include slight distortions of the meme to include other references to other popular parts of meme culture. If the meme is an image then it may include rasterized versions of the meme, and modified versions of the image to be more friendly to image boards (transparent background, etc.).

Running it into the ground/Beating the dead horse: The meme has become so wide spread that everyone has seen it at least twice and it loses its edge. It is no longer considered funny and most people are sick of seeing it. There are still a minority of people that find it funny and continue to post it, much to the annoyance of the majority. Sometimes attempts are made to perpetuate the meme for a while longer by making references to it using other memes. Some people start complaining about the meme and others start complaining about those who are complaining about the meme.

Mocking/Still beating the dead horse: Any posts including the original meme are considered "cancer" by the internet community and are generally disliked. Poorly drawn (often in MS paint) and misquoted versions of the meme are created and posted mocking it and comparing it to other "dead" or unpopular memes.

Fade into obscurity: The meme gradually gets posted less and less, including the mocking versions. People eventually forget about the meme. Sometimes it will crop back up again but for the most part it is forgotten.

One of the most interesting examples of the spread of memes in internet culture is when a user of the website known as 4chan caught on to the fact that the majority of popular memes had originated on 4chan. After being initially introduced or created on 4chan memes would seem to spread very quickly to the rest of the internet and become very popular very quickly. The user in this example noticed that it didn't seem to matter if the meme meant much or was particularly funny, it would just spread and become a meme anyway. So due to this the user decided to test their theory that the rest of the internet would follow like mindless sheep if a new meme was proposed. The user created a meme known as "New meme" (shown above on the right) that was intended to mock meme culture and forced memes. In the end they were proven correct as it was widely adopted quite quickly. This was most likely due to the fact that by sharing "New meme" people thought that they were laughing with the creator at the ones who would so quickly adopt it like sheep. Unfortunately they ended up being more the ones laughed at than the ones laughing as they had proven the original creator and poster of "New meme" correct.

Personally I quite like meme culture. It doesn't really fulfil many useful purposes other than entertainment, but it changes constantly with the various collective mood-swings of the internet community so there's always something new. If nothing else it's a bit like a house on fire: sometimes it's just fun to sit back and watch it burn.