from Hacker News

NSA tracks Google ads to find Tor users

by fury999io on 8/17/24, 1:38 PM with 69 comments

• by Hizonner on 8/17/24, 2:56 PM

  Why would you exhume an 11-year-old article full of half-information about the state of a fast-paced arms race?

• by meowface on 8/17/24, 2:17 PM

  [2013]

• by fortran77 on 8/17/24, 2:15 PM

  I'm not understanding this. If I use the "Tor Browser Bundle" and never use that browser for anything but Tor, and never log in to anything on that browser, how can they track me?

• by wkat4242 on 8/17/24, 5:27 PM

  > "The NSA then cookies that ad, so that every time you go to a site, the cookie identifies you. Even though your IP address changed [because of Tor], the cookies gave you away," he said.

  In other words, just using tails will solve this issue because every session gives you a clean environment.

• by iJohnDoe on 8/17/24, 4:00 PM

  Key takeaways.

  “The NSA buys ads from ad display companies like Google and seeds them around Tor's access points.”

  "On the off chance that [the spam recipient] renders the HTML or clicks a link, [the NSA] can connect your e-mail address to your browser," he explained, which the NSA would have already connected to an IP address. "Using Tor or any proxy wouldn't prevent it."

• by neilv on 8/17/24, 3:23 PM

  If the takehome message is "run an ad-blocker with your Tor Browser, to be safe", hopefully bad people believe that, and good people don't.

• by jmclnx on 8/17/24, 2:20 PM

  Yet another reason to purge cookies often :)

  Everytime I log into a site that I want to buy something from, I always clear cache, cookies, logins before and after using that site.

  Yes it can be a PITA, but I think that stops other sites from looking to see what WEB sites you really care about.

• by Intermernet on 8/17/24, 2:46 PM

  Imagine the world without internet ads. Journalism wouldn't be a click bait race to the bottom, news would still be relatively unbiased, and the nsa would have one less massive vector to track you with.

  I'm honestly just waiting for people to realise that online ads are the root cause of most of the things people complain about.

  Fake news? Check

  Surveillance state? Check

  Screen addiction? Check

  Lack of nuance in any debate? Check

  Unsavoury geopolitical influence? Check

  The advertising industry somehow manage to stay relevant, despite the fact that their business is literally the same as the dictionary definition of brain washing.

  Ah well, old man yells at clouds...