Pardon the rant. I have bought ancient coins on line for 10+ years. I am aware of the risks of putting my net worth out there for folks to see. I do not advertise on Facebook that I am a coin collector. I am the president of a small coin club, and I use a cell phone (not my home phone) as my contact phone. I know that folks can find me if they want, and I take precautions to make my collection hard to get to by using bank deposit boxes. This week, I have been overwhelmed by spam to my primary e-mail address. The e-mails list my name (or my wife's name), my home address and offer me a long list if stuff: bullion, jobs, travel deals, instructions for make at home plastic AK-47s, romance and you get the point. How does this tie into coins? This week I bought a horsehead/horsehead cast triens, I think. I have not received a confirmation from the auction that closed last week. I bid on line with one of the companies that handles auctions for several companies, Bid Inside. I have purchased from them before. What I do not remember is the insistence from the web site that I accept the use of cookies by the site. I read their description of how cookies are used by their site, but all I get is that they can suck out as much information as they want. I can not access the English version of the site because it is hidden under the pop-up that wants me to accept cookies. I do not see a link to decline their offer. I have purchased from several companies that insist on cookies, HA for one. My only NGC graded coin. I have had ads by HA pop-up on my work computer. I bought the coin at home. I use company screening at work, but they found a way to tell me they had some really nice "early" US bronze coins. How does that relate to my recent purchase? I suspect that my bill is under the link: Asta per Corrispondenza - Aggiudicazioni which translates: Auction Correspondence - AWARDS But the link only shows a black screen, perhaps because it wants me to ok the cookie. I really like the coin, but I refuse to ok the cookie pop-up. This coin should go well with the other (put a name here) X 2 coins: Triens - horsehead X2 Sextans - head of Dioscuri X 2 Sextans - shell X 2 Uncia - barley corn X2 In case you think I am way out of line. I do like cookies -
I love cookies... not the digital type I mean. But to make it short, a lot of sites don't disclaim they use cookies or its hidden in small print. Also if you use Google as a search engine, then you are being followed.
You probably already know this, but your browser will certainly allow you to delete some or all of your cookies. This might cause a temporary inconvenience for those sites that you actually want to maintain cookies, but using "clear all" is a small price to pay if you want to clean out all the web-based tracking. The e-mail issue is an entirely different problem. You can probably find a way to opt out of most of the spam sent by these sites, but in some cases you may have to block the sender (again, a feature provided by most e-mail programs) and you're unlikely to be able to eliminate all the spam you get. I'm no expert, and I'm sure that others on this site can provide even more helpful information.
At the top of this page click "Members" > "Current Visitors" and see how many robots are actively reading this site 24/7 and harvesting information.
I use the free version of Ccleaner after every session at night before I shut down. Once a week I use an old program called Toilet Flush which grabs a little more garbage. It's long outdated, 2005 I believe, but still works well and is a very tiny program. There is really no more safe havens on the internet, you just have to be on top of regular cleanings to stay comparatively safer. But as soon as I make a purchase an ad pops up on Bing (Outlook) email page. I also have Malwarebytes do an auto scan for virus protection after I have gone to bed. I have a paid sub to that.
I use Lightbeam which comes with Firefox, it shows you third party sights that have connected to your pc, it really is an eyeopener. The absolute worst site is LinkedIn. I was a member for some time. Then all of a sudden, I got a whole lot of new contacts, one of which was a forum member that I had corresponded with briefly a couple of years earlier. It had to have gone through my old emails to find and match the details. After a 30 second discussion with my husband, I deleted my account and I won't use the site again.
Just FYI, the EU (and possibly others) require web sites that use cookies to display that message to notify you. It does not turn on/off your cookies, it is simply a message that informs you that a cookie will be stored. If you actually want to turn off cookies (and break many web sites), you can do that within your browser.
Make a habit of using your browser's Private Browsing mode. It's not a panacea, but it can certainly help reduce the amount of information leaking between sites. I use it now whenever I'm researching a purchase, just because I'm sick of Google and Amazon deciding that since I was looking for a toilet brush, I'll surely want every page on the Internet to feature ads about toilet brushes and cleaners. And suppositories.
