I don’t get how it can get the fingerprint to be so unique as to attribute ads. Most mobile browsers are exactly the same, you have the same screen resolution and so on. And most desktop browsers when maximized are the same resolution. I mean there must be groups of thousands of users for each combination of fingerprinted features. So it’s not all the way down to the person, right? It’s just correlations?
Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
61–70 of 416 posts
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#62Is this a scandal?
I don't think it's a scandal. It's not new or surprising that ads use tracking techniques like this. Stack Exchange recently announced [1] that they will use ad networks as an experiment. That announcement was quite unpopular and met with resistance and pleas to allow only static images to avoid annoying ads as well as sophisticated tracking. So this is no scandal since they were open about it and knew the risks. It seems they ignored the community though so they probably lost some trust by the community. I wonder if they will take action and stop the experiment.
[1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329763/were-testing...
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#63Has anyone made a plugin that does a DOS on each ad server(s) detected? Then, we have built-in DDOS on the ad servers, if enough users install it.
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#64It's ok. SO's policy on abusive ads is to mention it on mets and hope a moderator notices and then acts upon it.
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#65Maybe it's to identify users behind a VPN as this is fingerprinting the device, not the connection. That's why I think the idea of running each site in a container is so effective. And while we're at it the container should just spit out random shit like different resolution, audio api, user agent, once in a while (unless the user turns it off) to thwart such attempts. Unfortunately when the creator and maintener of…
everyone should be running the same container though.
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#66Maybe it's to identify users behind a VPN as this is fingerprinting the device, not the connection. That's why I think the idea of running each site in a container is so effective. And while we're at it the container should just spit out random shit like different resolution, audio api, user agent, once in a while (unless the user turns it off) to thwart such attempts. Unfortunately when the creator and maintener of…
> And while we're at it the container should just spit out random shit like different resolution, audio api, user agent, once in a while (unless the user turns it off) to thwart such attempts. Wouldn't that break the legitimate feature-detection uses for these APIs? Asking the user to identify and whitelist each call is impractical, especially since the fail-case in this scenario would be subtle (you'd still see the…
Maybe, but that seems better than the current mess. I'd rather no features than features which act against my interests.
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#67There's something up with my PulseAudio (maybe changing audio output formats?) that means i hear a very loud "pop" when pages try to do this. e.g. Browsing to an arstechnica.com article, with speakers on but nothing else playing.
That sounds annoying. I don't think I would want my desktop environment to do that.
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#68I just wanted to chime in from Stack Overflow here and let people know: we are aware of the issue. And we're NOT okay with it. We're trying to sort out how to kill the audio behavior now. It's not very straightforward to find where it's coming from, but we are working on it. We've also reached out to Google for their assistance in tracking it down. If anyone can offer advice, we'll more than happily take it.
- Nick Craver, Architecture Lead at Stack Overflow
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#69I wonder if the top brass at alphabet ever worry that their trillion dollar empire is based on fragile foundations like web audio fingerprinting, etc. that sure would keep me up at night. obviously, i know google does more, but it seems like a large chunk of their revenue must be dependent on shady technical tricks like these working.
They don't have to worry because they control the browser too, and so those tricks will continue to work for the foreseeable future.
Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?
#70I just wanted to chime in from Stack Overflow here and let people know: we are aware of the issue. And we're NOT okay with it. We're trying to sort out how to kill the audio behavior now. It's not very straightforward to find where it's coming from, but we are working on it. We've also reached out to Google for their assistance in tracking it down. If anyone can offer advice, we'll more than happily take it. - Nick C…
Not sure how that plays with rules about how you can place ads etc, but with a feature policy can stop access to audio I think.