Howto

The pragmatic asenwr to intrusive tracking by FaceBook and Google would be to develop browser plug-ins that dynamically block selected servers. The dynamic blocking would be based on allowing a server access only if necessary *for the user* to perform an action.I have FaceBook blocked in my hosts file. For me, they are just another tracking server in an extensive list.This binary approach isn't a practical step for everybody Even if they don't use FaceBook, a few hundred million end users are not going to playing with their hosts file.Blocking all of Google in the same way would have a large element of cutting off nose to spite face. For Google, blocking has to be dynamic and selective.If FaceBook is only ubiquitous, then Google+ needs a stronger term to describe it.Neither FB or G are going to stop doing what they can do.The only reason to allow a page to access a FB or G server would be to allow it to do something that *we* want it to do.The trackers on this page do nothing for me.FB and G, for example, have no business recording my visit to this blog. If the cost of giving Michael recorded traffic for ranking is to expose myself as data to corporates, then the cost is unacceptable.Twitter can pick up this visit but *only* because I wished to comment here. That was *my* decision.If I were a FB user and wished to comment using the FB account here, I should have an option to allow the FB links from the page and reload the page. The permission would be for the page only and either temporary or permanent. The default would be that my visit here was never detectable to them.Even on a FB or G property, I'd like to have options that blocked any of their servers that were not necessary for the page to function for whatever *I* wanted to work. This is particularly important when using a Google property.A simple easy-to-use browser plug-in would be the only practical way of getting significant numbers of people to emasculate the muppets while still getting their Interwebz fix.