Waiting for Amazon Cryptocurrency Rumors To Come True? If You Value Your Privacy Then Read This First!

A recent article was published from deepdotweb that discussed how ad trackers make cryptocurrency transactions less private.

Here are the key points that the author makes in his article:

• Cookies and other information obtained by ad trackers that are used on e-commerce sites can reveal the identity of customers who pay with cryptocurrencies.

• Some of the information online stores share with third party advertisers can include purchases a user has made, how much they have spent, as well as contact and shipping information

• Some of the larger online vendors which accept cryptocurrencies include Overstock, Newegg, and Microsoft, all of which utilize third party ad trackers. Kryptonaut Note: It shouldn't come as a surprise that Amazon also uses ad trackers and browsing history as well.

• Google’s ad tracker is said to be installed on nearly 80% of sites on the internet, according to the researchers from Princeton. Some of the major ad trackers, such as Google and Facebook, also obtain information directly from user accounts on their services, but most ad trackers do not have that advantage

• Over 100 of the 130 e-commerce sites that accepted cryptocurrency also gave access to data about cryptocurrency transactions made by customers. Over 50 of the e-commerce sites exposed payment data to third party trackers through leaks in their shopping cart scripts. Over 30 of the e-commerce sites leaked customer e-mail addresses to third party trackers. A dozen of the e-commerce sites examined by the researchers directly leaked customer Bitcoin addresses to third party trackers. 13 of the e-commerce sites the researchers observed leaked shipping address information to third party trackers.

• People can protect themselves from the attacks the researchers used by utilizing privacy and anonymity software such as the Tor Browser and the Brave web browser, or add-ons such as uBlock Origin, Disconnect.me, and Ghostery.

• The researchers also noted that 25 out of the 130 e-commerce sites that were observed leaked information to third party trackers even when certain forms of tracking protection were used.

Yikes!

It sucks that there are any number of ways that information can be collected on a person. Add e-commerce ad trackers to that list. I rather not think of how many ways there are to track me outside of e-commerce's grasp.

While a savvy, and security conscious user can take steps to mitigate the risk, I think that if you are ever targeted by a professional then in the long run you are at a disadvantage.

That doesn't mean you should make it easy. Be aware, and be vigilant about taking steps to protect yourself with anything that you do on the internet. Especially if you want a certain level of privacy.

Traversing the Cryptosphere,
Kryptonaut