Hacked??

[Arch_Enemy]

These browsers are leaking like a darn sieve. Isn't Amazon tied at the hip with the three-letter-agencies? Bad news.

SInce this system is so wonky, guess I'm going to wipe and reinstall. Is there a way to block all of the amazonaws/akamaitechnologies traffic?



Note: Dillo and Dooble do not show any leakage whatsoever.

They aren't leaking anything. Amazon AWS, Akamai, Fastly (151.101.0.201) and EdgeCast (72.21.91.29) that you see in Firefox output are all CDNs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network). Those are used to efficiently distribute content around the globe. Firefox checks for add-ons updates, for search engine updates, gets information from safe browsing project and other such updates. Those as a rule would be downloaded from a CDN near you. Depending on what you have set as your browser's homepage, the same might go for that (if it's not a local file).

So when you start up and run Firefox it does some things on its own to update stuff and uses CDNs for that.

In practice you won't be able to use the Internet if you block CDNs. CDNs are little more than mirror servers. Have the same content on multiple servers around the world and when trying to access a resource (image file, script file, stylesheet file, font file, and the like) direct the user's browser to the server that is geographically closest to them. Most websites use CDNs for this purpose, so that their users experience a very fast website. If you block CDNs, you're effectively blocking entire websites from working.

(Also applications and games use CDNs to deliver server-side content swiftly to their users around the globe. That's beyond what you're worried about here though.)

So no, there's nothing wrong with your Linux Mint install at this point. Nor will reinstalling Linux Mint (or installing another operating system) change anything in this regard if you use the same web browsers. That Dillo and Dooble or whatever don't show the same at start up is entirely meaningless. Perhaps they don't have add-ons, search engines or other things that they update. Or perhaps they do have them but never update them. Or perhaps they have them but update them not at start up but after x minutes. But when you visit a major website with Dillo or Dooble you will see connections to CDNs as most websites uses CDNs to make their website experience fast for their users.

Blocking CDNs like Amazon AWS or Akamai will prevent Dillo and Dooble from being able to display most websites as well. CDNs are nothing "spooky" and certainly have nothing to do with three-letter-agencies. CDNs are a core infrastructure component of the Internet today, which allows websites to deliver content very fast to their users—regardless of where on the globe their users are.

Should have a "Like" button here. Exactly.