Less tracking with third party cookies disabled?

For years, I have surfed with Firefox with the following cookie policy---cookies allowed until I close Firefox, third party cookies not allowed.

In recent years, tracking protection has become en vogue, and I have FF tracking protection enabled all the time.

Occasionally I come across a site that requires third party cookies to be enabled, that I need to allow. I am wondering--what would be the difference between allowing all cookies, even third party cookies, until I close the browser, and continuing with tracking protection enabled all the time? What difference would that make, from a tracking standpoint--or would there be any difference, between that setup, and what I do now (cookies allowed until I close browser; third party cookies not allowed ever)?

 

If you connect via Ethernet (and that is best) instead of WiFi, I would not worry about it. When connecting via Ethernet, all any one can tell about your physical location is your PoP (point of presence). The PoP is where your ISP connects your computer to the Internet backbone. In my case, that is 10 miles away in the next town over. If you connect via WiFi, your wireless router may use geolocation to pinpoint you.

Do note that the vast majority of those tracking cookies are harmless. They do things like take you to the Applebee's or Walmart in your neighborhood instead of the one across the country when you do searches.

 

If I had tracking protection enabled in Firefox, and then went ahead and allowed third party cookies---would that still prevent my being tracked?

 

Nothing prevents all tracking. Truthfully, I would worry more about your ISP tracking you since they already know your true home address, real name and billing information. And worse yet is your cell phone carrier because they not only know your name, address, and billing information, they know who you talked to and texted, where you been on the Internet, plus when and where you have been physically, where you are currently standing to within a few feet including the aisle of the store you are currently standing in, and they know the direction you are heading and how fast you are traveling.

It amazes me how much people complain about Microsoft and Windows 10 when there are so many much more egregious offenders out there like Google, ISPs (which Congress has now given them the right to sell our personal data! ) and cell carriers and others.

Look at Alexa and Amazon Echo that can listen to and record everything said our living rooms!

Speaking of Google, if not already, you might consider using DuckDuckGo instead of Google or Bing as your default search engine. It promises not to track you.

You can also set CCleaner to run every time you start your computer. And what is nice with CCleaner is you can have CCleaner keep cookies to places you trust, like WindowsBBS, so you don't have to enter your credentials every time.

 

If you live in Europe, your rights in this area will change considerably on May 25th when the General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect. It will then be forbidden to force you into accepting third-party cookies for you to get access to a website. It will be illegal to discriminate people that don't want to accept unwanted usage of their personal information, and third-party cookies represent personal information. They will have to provide you the exact same services and the exact same functionality in their website also if you don't accept tracking cookies. If a website continues this practice, you should contact your national authority that handles GDPR complaints and complain about the website's practice. The website owner can then be find up to 20 million euros by this national authority without a court case or involving police.