From Engadget:
Throughout discussions about Cambridge Analytica, parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and how they came to obtain information on some 87 million Facebook users, you've probably also heard the name AggregateIQ. The Canada-based data firm has now been connected to Cambridge Analytica operations as well as US election campaigns and the Brexit referendum. Now, cybersecurity firm UpGuard has discovered a large code repository that AggregateIQ left exposed online, and through that we're getting a better look at the company, what it does and how it does it.
From the first of Upguard's multipart series:
On the night of March 20th, 2018, UpGuard Director of Cyber Risk Research Chris Vickery discovered a large data warehouse hosted on a subdomain of AIQ and using a custom version of popular code repository Gitlab, located at the web address gitlab.aggregateiq.com. Entering the URL, Gitlab prompts the user to register to see the contents - a free process which simply requires supplying an email address. Once registered, contents of the dozens of separate code repositories operated on the AggregateIQ Gitlab subdomain are entirely downloadable. Within these repositories appear to be nothing less than mechanisms capable of organizing vast quantities of data about individuals, measuring how they are being influenced or reached by advertising, and even tracking their internet browsing behavior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @04:11AM (1 child)
Why play whack-a-mole with long, probably out-of-date blacklists? Better to use a custom personal whitelist as that will get 100% of the buggers. (This implementation is browser only and of course having a custom list will add to your fingerprint if some serious player wants to track you...)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy-legacy/ [mozilla.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 16 2018, @04:45AM
The hosts lists are constantly being updated, true. Sites do come and go. But, when you consider the number of sites included in the old respected hosts files, then realize how many of them have remained from day one - the files are worth the effort of installing. Especially considering that there are scripts to do the updating, with no further input from the user.
I recommend hosts file, they really help. What I do NOT recommend, is reliance on the hosts file alone!