Data being taken from your computer during TFL visits
Nothing really new here, just hopefully some useful info. Everytime you visit a website you probably know that programs, scripts and processes run without you generally knowing and data is taken from your computer and sent to companies all over the globe. Often these are marketing companies who may then spam you or telephone you but either way your details are likely going into massive data warehouses. Apart from collecting data, these processes open up many "outbound connections" on your PC which can affect performance and of course the data they take contributes to any monthly data allowance you have with your broadband provider.
If you want to stop this from happening then you have to identify the IP addresses where all this data is going to, work out who they are and then instruct your PC firewall to block those IP addresses. I have done this for all of the main websites that I use on a daily basis. I did it because I was appalled at just how many "outbound connections" were opening up everytime I visited my favourite websites, sometimes it was over 100 at a time. It is time consuming identifying the IP Addresses involved and searching the Net to find out which companies own them. However I have done this for The Fresh Loaf website. Surprisingly I found that every time I visited this great site, data from my computer was being sent to over 30 companies !
Now it is one thing for us to see and accept the presence of advertisements on websites (which are often needed to fund the site) but it is another thing entirely to allow a site to take your data and send it to so many different companies. Especially when you can't be sure just what that data is or how it will be used.
Since I have done the groundwork to identify most of the IP addresses that TFL seems to be linked to, I figured it would be useful to some of you to post up a list of them. If you know how to use your firewall, you can simply enter each of these IPs into the "Blocked Zone" area. Once you do this, your data won't be taken again when you visit this website. Obviously this only prevents data scraping when you visit TFL. Ideally you also need to do the same for all your favourite sites. I can't do that for you, but I can give you the list for TFL. So here it is:
IP Addresses collecting data on TFL
(note that Google and Amazon IPs are often involved in data collection activities even if you haven't visited their sites. It is big business ! Blocking these IPs will not affect your use of the actual Google or Amazon websites - but if it did you could easily unblock the IP anyway).
Block the following IPs
199.96.57.6 - Twitter
174.129.250.140 - Amazon
77.242.204.10 - InterNAP Network Services U.K. Limited
208.78.169.230 - Federated Media Publishing
74.117.199.102 - ADIFY CORPORATION
198.47.127.15 - Pubmatic Amsterdam, NL
66.117.28.68 - WebSideStory Search and Content Solutions
185.29.134.233 - RIPE Network Coordination Center
66.12.68.41 - Genuity DSL
54.75.234.41 - Merck and Co.
31.13.90.2 - Facebook Ireland Ltd
64.233.166.84 - Google
68.232.35.139 - EdgeCast Networks
172.228.91.168 - America Online
87.248.212.154 - LIMELIGHT NETWORKS
104.66.78.88 - Unknown
151.249.94.55 - CDNetworks Inc.
204.236.238.224 - Amazon.com
54.194.194.206 - Merck and Co.
23.251.142.20 - Google Inc user content
64.34.226.93 - IP Tones (Peer 1 Network)
204.2.197.201 - Media6Degrees Inc
64.12.68.41 - America Online
185.29.133.223 - RIPE Network Coordination Center
205.234.175.175 - CacheNetworks
95.140.226.151 - LIMELIGHT NETWORKS
151.249.94.37 - CDNetworks Inc
74.125.133.95 - Google
173.194.126.184 - Google
31.13.90.17 - Facebook Ireland Ltd
104.28.8.97 Unknown
174.35.0.0 - 174.35.0.255 - CDNETWORKS (ALLTEL Corporation)
The IP for the TFL site itself appears to be 198.199.69.68. Obviously DO NOT block this IP.
Cheers
EP