Princeton Study Exposes Weird New Ways Sites Are Spying on You

Stop "clearing your cookies." The classic advice for protecting yourself from internet tracking doesn't work very well against the newest breed of sophisticated snoopers who are spying on you using everything from your iPhone's battery status level to the kinds of fonts installed on your browser, Princeton researchers say in a massive new analysis of 1 million web sites, the largest of its kind. The "trackers" find out what kind of person you are, and then serve you targeted ads. If you visit those sites, data about you is gathered up and resold to other marketers. You read the news for free (sometimes) and someone gets paid to write it, and funny cat picture sites get their server costs covered. -- More...