Network card - pfSense and Facebook icon in email (privacy)

KonaKat said:

This is the best place I could find to post this thread - Please move it if there is a better forum location.

I have two questions about network card choices and Facebook icons in emails.

1. I am thinking of building out a pfSense firewall using an AMD 3200G that I have. Can anyone suggest a decent, yet inexpensive network card?

2. I received an email from my medical supply company to order new equipment. The asked if I replied with my name and birthday along with the equipment I want to order. There is a Facebook icon and two other social media icons in the email. I do NOT use Facebook or any other social media. I am not sure if the Facebook icon is the metapixel as mentioned here:

Facebook is receiving sensitive medical information from hospital websites

Ad-tracking by some hospitals may violate federal law protecting health data.

arstechnica.com

Should I be concerned about my information being sent to Facebook via their icon in the email? Is this HIPAA-related?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

1) Whatever's on the BSD compatibility list. Unless you're pushing maximum the cost difference isn't worth it. A Fake Intel card will perform maybe worse then a Realtek card and more the cost.

2) If your email client is showing images that allows this tracking to happen. Then it is outdated or your opened up the security hole yourself.

If you wanted to keep the same email but cut down on tracking, you could use an email redirection service like https://duckduckgo.com/email and give that out instead.

If you are using the Gmail app on your phone and it is showing images. Then you opened the hole yourself in your settings.

There are other adapters other then Intel. But i only mention it as it is highly faked and the only one you'll mistakenly find for "inexpensive". The other companies in the same performance class are also not in the inexpensive range. Assuming you're in the 10GB card range.

It's possible that the image is just embedded in the email, rather than being a link. Not LIKELY, but possible. You can tell if it's a link by hovering over it, and at the very minimum loading the icon lets Facebook see a connection from your PC. You'd just need to view the source code of the email to tell. The most likely case is that they copied whatever "like us on Facebook" link was provided by Facebook (and the other two sites) and that URL will include things like a referral code to identify that provider as the referrer for the icon loading and the referrer if you click on the link. As far as it being a metapixel/web bug, again you could look at the source to see what it does, but there's a good chance that when the icon is loaded your browser or the Gmail client is going to accept the cookie that the server sets as it loads, therefore allowing it to be tracked and potentially associating you and the medical provider's website.

KonaKat said:

Thank you for the replies. I value all of your feedback. Right now, all I need is a gigabit card. SuperMicro makes an Intel i350 adapter that I found new for a reasonable price.

About the email issue, it is a referrer link, and I had previously enabled the Fanboy's Anti-Facebook list in uBlock Origin so that should help with blocking some of the inbound crap from facebook. I sent the medical supply company (a small business) an email about my concern. I also included links from the Ars site about Microsoft's Recall, too.

Click to expand...

None of those companies give a damn about those concerns. Tracking links help them, or at least their marketing consultants tell them they do, and they don't care what Facebook and the others do with the data.

Without specifics about your needs, recommendations on specific cards aren't really possible. A $10 Realtek-based Gigabit NIC will provide exactly the same performance and functionality as a $100 i350 in 90% of cases, and be 99% as good in most of the rest, so whether that extra 1% (some of the time) of performance is worth the extra cost depends on what you're really doing with it. Unless you're heavily loading the firewall, I can't really imagine it causing a real-world noticeable difference. Even if you need a single card with multiple ports, a Realtek card would cost less and be just as good, even with 2.5Gb ports.

KonaKat said:

1. I am thinking of building out a pfSense firewall using an AMD 3200G that I have. Can anyone suggest a decent, yet inexpensive network card?

Click to expand...

Pfsense says "The best practice is to use Intel NICs because they have solid driver support in FreeBSD and they perform well."

source: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/hardware/index.html#network-adapters

I'm not sure how many ports you need or if you need sfp.

The i350 and i226 are both good controllers to consider.

Can not recommend the i226. See @Lord Evermore post bellow.

To make sure the card is legitimate the name should be embossed on the chip.

I also recommend reading this guide for general information on how determine if a card is a genuine or fake

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/comparison-intel-i350-t4-genuine-vs-fake.6917/

Area51Freak said:

The i350 and i226 are both good controllers to consider.

Click to expand...

I'd never use an i225/i226 chip for anything. They're kinda sorta working properly now, in most situations, but they just had too many problems for a very long time and Intel admits they still can't totally fix them. It astonishes me that every little firewall box I've seen is still built using them, and motherboards still have them, but I guess Intel made them cheap enough that the problems are considered acceptable.

Lord Evermore said:

I'd never use an i225/i226 chip for anything. They're kinda sorta working properly now, in most situations, but they just had too many problems for a very long time and Intel admits they still can't totally fix them. It astonishes me that every little firewall box I've seen is still built using them, and motherboards still have them, but I guess Intel made them cheap enough that the problems are considered acceptable.

Click to expand...

thank you for the correction, since it was used in a lot of other builds and recommended thought it was fine.