Featured image: When you browse a single website, an array of hundreds of entities may be probing the page, collecting bits of information about you. (Courtesy Ars Technica and Gary Waters)
This week on These Vibes, we have a double header: the show starts off with Dr. Jim Bell, President of the Planetary Society, on his new book The Ultimate Interplanetary Travel Guide. A future of space tourism—hiking the mountains of Mars, skiing the ice of Europa, dining aboard cloud hotels on Venus–may be closer than you think!
Afterward, we are joined by Dr. Arvind Narayanan, professor in Princeton University’s Department of Computer Science and expert on web privacy. There are many reasons a web surfer may want to be discreet about their identity: tracking your online actions may enable personal enemies, corporations, or the government to act against you, or persuade you to take some action. In fact, advances in web tracking enable the array of entities behind each website to gather information about internet-goers and use it against them, by means of targeted advertising, addicting apps, or worse. Hear how canvas fingerprinting can connect your online and offline lives, how all this lack of privacy may shape the society of the future, and why there’s hope that we may be able to fend off the worst if we recognize this as a problem.
If you would like to take charge of your web privacy, take a look at the following extensions that help block trackers within pages:
The playlist is available on WPRB.com or below.
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