VPN and cookies

[swannybc]

I installed a VPN yesterday. I turned the VPN on and opened my browser (Firefox) and everything seemed fine, the VPN IP address was displayed in the upper right corner on the browser, however, I also noticed that when I used Google, it was displaying advertisements for products I was looking at on Amazon a few days back, before I had the VPN. How is this possible if my IP is routed through the VPN server and supposedly disguised? Are websites able to read cookies installed on your computer, even after you install and use a VPN? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[OriginalCadaver]

Yes, the VPN isn't going to hide your cookies. Those cookies have hashes that the sites can use to track you. Your best bet would be to use the VPN then have a different browser that is locked down to not accept cookies.

 

[Solandri]

Are websites able to read cookies installed on your computer, even after you install and use a VPN?

Yes they are. All those facebook and twitter icons you see on websites? Those are used to track you. There are more insidious tracking mechanisms than cookies too. You should also be using adblock, since one of the non-cookie tracking methods is for ads to run a script which looks at your hardware config to uniquely identify you.

If you're concerned about privacy, make sure to install Ghostery. It'll block most of the tracking cookies you'll run across, as well as some of the non-cookie tracking methods. Firefox also has options to delete all cookies, browser cache files, and history. You can do this manually, or set it to do this every time you close the browser. Firefox and Chrome also have incognito/private browsing modes which do the same thing for that particular browser window (they're also a great way to sign into multiple gmail accounts at once if, say, you use one address for personal mail and another for work mail).

You can also run flashblock (flash is one of the non-cookie ways to track you), to prevent flash apps from running unless you explicitly click on them. There are cookie managers too which let you whitelist/blacklist cookies from certain sites (I won't recommend one because my favorite stopped working with recent Firefox builds). And the nuclear option is noscript, which will block all javascript unless you explicitly allow it. The last two take a lot of work allowing just the non-tracking sites - it took several months before my whitelist was enough for me to browse normally. Ghostery does pretty much the same thing with a blacklist. (Whitelist = everything blocked unless allowed. Blacklist = everything allowed unless blocked.)

 

[Alabalcho]

A common misconception about VPN is that it somehow "automagically" will make your surfing safer. No, the only thing VPN does is to make as your computer is connected to the Internet from somewhere' else. VPN does not know about cookies, virues, etc.

One thing which usually changes is web site' behaviour when you're on VPN. For example - check bing.com page on your native connection, and on your VPN to another country. WHen you're on VPN, BING sees you're in another country, and displays it's home page as if you are connecting to the 'net from that country.

 

[swannybc]

Thanks for you help. Will definitely will set up Firefox to delete browsing history and cookies automatically and look into Ghostery.

 

[OffenFender]

I think you should turn off cookies in your browser completely and then turn on your VPN. The owners of the sites are inventive enough to pick up and use your personal data, be very careful.