Hi Rumpelstiltskin,
You are making some vary valid remarks here, two contradictory tendencies, where the common non-educated user stands to loose at the end of the day: - he or she is taken by surprise and is unaware what goes on behind his or her back. We have a mission here to educate those that come in here, if they wish to know how to secure their browsers a bit better security-and-privacy-wise. RIP version 1.0.6.4 from
http://rip.mozdev.org/ and you can do a lot more permanently or semi-permanently or only on one page or as a general rule. Mozilla CacheView (a beautiful tip from Bob 3160) gives you insight at what is stored on your computer.
Even if you have cleared out cookies, personal tracking identification can set your old cookie information back and through what is stored on your comp can establish what they want to serve up to you. With script running they can reconstruct your browser history, surfing habits, profile, geo-location, more than you care to realize even.
Browser habits is big business to them, just like here in Europe where they know all about you when you mention your street code and house number, and the same goes when you enter your date of birth (then they don't need your name, all further information is linked anyway). You are already completely transparent, that is not the point, but completely transparent to how many institutions or organizations, and is this info linked? The "I have nothing to hide, what can they do to me" argument is stupid, because do you want everybody to know about every aspect of your profile, etc all the time?.
Again to get some of these fundamental rights back you have to install quite some cocktail of security and privacy related add-ons, extensions and additional proggies, and that is a bit too much for the common sheeple. Some can see the writing on the wall, some are so numbed down they can't even be bothered, and it is way over their heads, and we cannot do this alone, we have to do this together, Rumpelstiltskin,
polonus