Problems using this forum with my browser

[Forage420]

Hi everyone, can I just say before I start that I really enjoy this forum and I do not want to be misunderstood as being in any way ungreatful or critical of what has been put together here.

Getting down to brass taxes, according to my privacy browser duckduckgo, growfruitandveg uses tracking cookies, and without using Google Chrome browser I can't access the forum at all. I click on the forum button and nothing happens. If I scroll down the page I can see the forum live feed and I'm able to click on a thread, but again nothing happens. This leads me to suspect that growfruitandveg has been coded in such a way to stop people from using the forum who are not prepared to surrender their right to privacy, and whose use of the site is tracked with every click.Some people, like myself, choose to protect their privacy online, or at least minimise the data they give out.

According to my other browser : Google analytics, Google advertising and criteo are 3 of the major tracking companies mining this site. Furthermore, and most worrying to me, the privacy practices of growfruitandveg are listed as 'unknown' meaning it's unclear exactly what data growfruitandveg mines.


There are many people now especially unhappy with how Google is monopolising the web and mining everyone's data and have chosen to boycott Google services. At the moment I'm not one of them, but as my other browser allows me to see just how invasive some of the aggressive marketing and spying is, it's making me more aware and wary of continuing to use Google services into the future. Sadly that will mean boycotting websites that are intertwined with Google because they make money in add revenue, and by intertwined I mean websites that lock down their users in such a way as to make parts of their site inaccessible if they don't comply.

Growfruitandveg is currently rated a C,+ for it's privacy policy, to give an example, youtube has a D rating, which is one of the worse there is, and although it's one of many websites with forums whose privacy rating is equally as bad, I've never before encountered the inability to access the forum of any other website besides this one.

I'd be very interesting to hear back from people about this, and to repeat again, I really enjoy this site and enjoy using it and it's not a criticism especially not of the mods who likely have no say in how the website is coded and how the privacy and access features are put together, and who do a good job.

Thanks for reading if you've gotten this far.

[Greenleaves]

We will pass your concerns on

[Snoop Puss]

It's an interesting issue, Forage, but nothing comes for free. My view is that trying to hide my tracks is nowhere near as important as ensuring that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are maintained.

I hope that doesn't come across as glib. I've written and deleted a number of replies. But the above is the summarised version.

[DannyK]

Which browser are you using? Duckduckgo is a search engine not a browser. I use it on my Firefox browser which gives this weird result

If you follow through you can over-ride the block.

No problems with forum using Google on Opera or Safari.

I'll try changing search engine on Firefox and see what happens. It used to be easy but they've changed the layout! I hate updates!

[Lumpy]

Ermmmmmm........yes very worrying (sorry) I don’t have a Scoobie.

[Forage420]

Which browser are you using? Duckduckgo is a search engine not a browser. I use it on my Firefox browser which gives this weird result[ATTACH=CONFIG]85707[/ATTACH]

If you follow through you can over-ride the block.

No problems with forum using Google on Opera or Safari.

I'll try changing search engine on Firefox and see what happens. It used to be easy but they've changed the layout! I hate updates!

Can you try using duckduckgo web browser on a smart phone and tell me what happens? It's available for download through the google play store.. rather ironic really.

I suspect you are getting that message because growfruitandveg does not appear to be encrypting data, which is rather concerning also.

[DannyK]

I downloaded that browser to my iPhone and got straight on to the forum! No problems.

Computers are such quirky things. I've been using them since the mid 1980s.

Avast Security shows there are nine trackers on this site but so what This is a gardening forum so nothing crucial is posted and as Snoop Puss says it's not really free.

It may end up like Youtube, which offers a premium no ads service if you pay.

Quite a few sites are blocking access now if you have an adblocker on.

The people that really worry me are Zuckerberg and Co at Facebook, who take money for ads for very dubious things like binary trading (this has now stopped due to pressure from authorities) and bitcoins. Even Google has pulled bitcoin ads! Their algorithms are giving people some very slanted news. Unfortunately some are naive enough to rely solely on social media for news.

You could block and clear all cookies but all sorts of things will go wonky or not work at all. There are also anti adware programs for computers, no idea about mobiles. I run Malwarebytes.

Trackers are the least of our worries

[Kirk]

Cookies are amusing. I nearly always now get a notification along the lines of we respect your privacy and we just want to load our cookies on your machine and that of other third party organisations for your pleasure (what ??) and so we can analyse your interests and tailor some assorted gumph to target you with.

Now the thought I have is if you respected my privacy you wouldn't try it at all. No-one ever says who the assorted third parties are either.

What ever makes any think I will change my cookie settings also, which is often another request - Change Cookie Settings. Why do they think I set it as it is?

One forum I am on just doesn't try to add a cookie unless I/you log on, and that one is just for the log on to the site and so enable posting etc.

Problem with Analytics are they are not classed as cookies, and so are generally not deleted. Not sure how they conned their way in to that. I found that an analytic really slowed my old PC down. Which meant I knew it was there and so could delete it.

[Dave]

Hey, Admin here. Are you using the https version of the site? Or the http version?

Privacy is very important to us. We take data protection very seriously. In a nutshell we have left the http version open for the timebeing because some areas of our site pull in content from thirdparties and we're working through a solution to keep them live.