RufusJacksons

I consider myself to be pretty switched on when it comes to privacy, although I’ve began caring less and less as my attention is spent on other things… Maybe I slipped to far, because last night I was browsing a website looking for a Human Machine Interface from 4d systems (a relatively niche product) Today, it’s the first ad that appears on Instagram. Any idea how it got there?

1. Searched for it via DuckDuckGo, in safari on OS X. (Signed into Instagram on that browser, and fake Facebook account which shares no info with said Instagram. Fake facebook account signed in on same iPhone as Instagram. 2. Instagram and fake Facebook settings have fully disabled all tracking and ad personalisation settings that are possible. 3. I actively engage ads I don’t care about, and often receive ads for COMPLETELY irrelevant things, I find this fun.

How did within a matter of hours this HMI end up on my Insta feed, I’m sure I’m missing something obvious… surely not cookies…

Someone shared, or bled data. 4d systems webpage? Likely - but they don’t know anything about me… AdGuard and safari - couldn’t be a cookie? duckduckgo? Doubt it Safari? I thought safari blocked cross site tracking?

Part of the appeal of the Mac ecosystem as most of us are aware, is the interconnectivity of all services and devices. However, I've began to get self conscious about leaving my iCloud logged into my work Mac, with all my personal emails, photos, keychain and text messages synced.

How are others handling this? Not using personal services on a work computer? Is anyone logging these services out at the end of each day? I'm afraid in the UK my employer would have the right to all of my data if I left it logged in, or if they demanded the password.

I have a work PC, a personal MacBook Pro, and a desktop that runs my media server.

I’m tired of transferring files back and forth, and want to unify these machines. Beyond having my MacBook Pro permanently sitting there with VNC running so I can access it, I want to move entirely to a VM that I can access from my barebones MacBook Pro, my media PC or my work PC. Or my phone. I know AWS and a million other companies offer VPS, and maybe I’m over complicating it - but I desperately want a single system that I can bring up from any terminal I happen to be using at the time. I’d be happy to bring it with me on a USB disk, and launch it with portable VMware in a pinch, but would much rather have it be cloud based, and running OSX.

Does anyone have any insight or ideas for how to move away from having multiple computers without replacing my work machine?