Hi SwampMonster,
Through this general message here:
http://www.badphorm.co.uk/ you can read and understand how the general situation has worsened by a great extent
over the years under the guise of "Upholding Imperial Security".
In these respects the user position on the Interwebs has been totally and utterly eroded
and brought back to a postion of a sort of "click-cattle" exclusively there to bring in greater revenue
and being monitored to stay within the bounderies set out for them.
What you are referring to are just smoke-screens to lead away
from the right interpretation of the overall situation,
contrary to privacy and security as sides of the same medal.
polonus
P.S. A more practical tip is to use a good ad-blocker and a decent script blocker - like uBlock Origin (with particular susbscriptions) and uMatrix or NoScript and RequestPolicy extensions in Firefox.
Here an example of a destination that I certainly would block also in the light of what was reported in this thread:
uMatrix has prevented the following page from loading:
htxp://a.oix.net/services/invite?eorig=FgB4AcsoKSmw0tfPTczM0atMzMjP10vOz9UHAFvrB-Y.&tok=33Ezjb-8voik9V1LOgvdSQAB And then I would click to
Go back!Interesting background read:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/22/nsa-gchq-targeted-kaspersky/Damian