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Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

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Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#111

Post by jwatt »

jimijazz wrote: post #75
toyg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still several bits of data, like plugin support, touch support, platform, language, screen size, and timezone, that have to be actively manipulated if you want to reduce the likelihood of unique tracking.

are there any browsers that obscure these properties to sites?

Firefox has various privacy.resistFingerprinting preferences that can be flipped by extensions (or manually). Expect some sites to break though.

Edit: Oh, apparently there's built-in UI now: https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/how-to-block-fingerprinting...

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#112

Post by DonHopkins »

philwelch wrote: post #104
friedegg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You reach a point where if nearly everyone is blackmail-able for the same thing, that it stops becoming effective. If everyone is cheating on their spouse, then who is anyone to judge?

There's still an information asymmetry that's powerful. If everyone knows that everyone is cheating on their spouse, it's ineffective. If the Stasi knows that everyone is cheating on their spouse, and isn't stupid enough to share quite all of that information with everyone, it's another story. And with porn it's so multifaceted. Everybody breaches some taboo or other, but they're all different taboos. Not to mention…

These days, cheating on your spouse with a porn star right after she gave birth to your child is considered presidential.

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#113

Post by Raphmedia »

codesushi42 wrote: post #100
Raphmedia wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, that's usernames I'm talking about. We'd say "Oh, go log in as 'CoolUser69'. The password is 'hunter2'. We are sharing this account together, chip in a few bucks a month if you can" or "oh, I have a curated playlist of [XYZ category]. Look up 'CoolUser69' on [KinkySite.xxx]". The age range is 26-31 years. Both males and females. Anything from owners of small web development agencies to university stude…

Yes, but you may be talking about your social circle. I am skeptical that casually sharing your porn habits is going to be seen as acceptable and normal in the eyes of most of your peers. I'm a few years from the age range you mentioned, and I can't say I have seen the same level of openness. Not even close.

Values change wildly depending on where you are from.

I am mostly talking about second and third generation atheists from Montréal and the surrounding region. The way of life is obliviously very different than what it would be in let's say, conservative southern USA.

That being said, being open about sexuality brings openness. For example, I had a very long conversation with a woman from Haiti this last weekend. She has a lot of questions and we talked about everything from the existence of female orgasms to gender identities and sexuality. I could literally see the weight and shame lift off her shoulders as I explained and normalized concepts for her.

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#114

Post by meruru »

hnaccy wrote: post #77
meruru wrote: post #6

The hentai sites I tend to use are pretty good in this regard I think. Most of them even work with no JS. E.g. https://danbooru.donmai.us https://e-hentai.org Edit: I tried visiting them without adblock and I'm actually surprised they didn't even have ads.

e-hentai is EOL if you weren't aware.

I know, but I'll stick to it until a proper successor appears. nhentai.net and hitomi.la recompresses images and I want to be able to archive the originals easily.

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#115

Post by cronix »

toyg wrote: post #29
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #4

Looks like everyone - vulnerable population or not - should be using VPN when viewing pornographic content.[1] [1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/07/why-you-n...

VPN protection from site-level tracking is basically nonexistent. Browser fingerprinting is widespread and bypasses anything a VPN might offer. VPN is effective against network-level issues, not against browser-based tracking - it's a different level in the stack.

Sounds like that's fairly easily solved by just using a different browser only for your porn habits. If you use FF for your normal web browsing, only use Chrome just for porn, etc.

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#116

Post by _b4ut »

Maybe a good moment to commemorate the infamous RedTubeGate from 2013 in Germany:

A couple lawyers and fishy business men launch an ad campaign on RedTube. Through that advertisement they collected IP addresses of visitors.

Before launching that campaign they allegedly bought the rights for three cheap porn flicks.

Now they also claim that they have some miraculous software which allows them to track who has been watching those flicks on RedTube. They even get a totally unclear blueprint for that software officially certified by a surveyor. [4]

Then they appeal to a court in Cologne for the real world addresses corresponding to the IP addresses arguing they can prove those poor schmocks watched their illegally uploaded crap flicks.

Suddenly thousands of people receive letters threatening legal action if they do not agree on paying a fee of 250 Euro. Many people comply out of fear for their reputation and just pay.

1: https://web.archive.org/web/20140822000304/http://www.wbs-la...

2: https://www.joyofdata.de/blog/tool-visualization-connections...

3: https://web.archive.org/web/20140911214044/http://www.cracka...

4: https://www.abmahnhelfer.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EV.pd...

(many of the original sources have been deleted and are only available through archive.org)

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#117

Post by the8472 »

meruru wrote: post #6

The hentai sites I tend to use are pretty good in this regard I think. Most of them even work with no JS. E.g. https://danbooru.donmai.us https://e-hentai.org Edit: I tried visiting them without adblock and I'm actually surprised they didn't even have ads.

Note that both sites also host non-pornographic content and on danbooru it's the dominant kind.

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#118

Post by codesushi42 »

Raphmedia wrote: post #113
codesushi42 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you may be talking about your social circle. I am skeptical that casually sharing your porn habits is going to be seen as acceptable and normal in the eyes of most of your peers. I'm a few years from the age range you mentioned, and I can't say I have seen the same level of openness. Not even close.

Values change wildly depending on where you are from. I am mostly talking about second and third generation atheists from Montréal and the surrounding region. The way of life is obliviously very different than what it would be in let's say, conservative southern USA. That being said, being open about sexuality brings openness. For example, I had a very long conversation with a woman from Haiti this last weekend. She…

I am not arguing the merits of openness, or whatever. But you don't need to travel all of the way to southern US to find that most people even in that age range aren't open about sharing their porn habits.

Claiming there would be no consequences from sharing publicly is unrealistic at best and dishonest at worst.

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#119

Post by namanyayg »

philwelch wrote: post #98
namanyayg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, along with the very-fucking-annoying Youtube Face [0]. It's so ordinary to mess with human psychology, anything to increase click through rates! [0] https://boingboing.net/2018/04/11/youtube-face-the-same-thum...

It seems like most of the examples of that are "reaction" videos, and if you're trying to sell a reaction video, you show the reaction, right?

I see it everywhere, not just on reaction videos.

I can count the number of reaction videos I've seen on one hand but the YouTube face is all over my homepage.

The next iteration to this is out, it's using extreme Snapchat-esque filters to comically exaggerate the size of the eyes and mouth of a reaction face.

It's mesmerisingly disgusting, I wonder what the next steps are. More digital augmentation awaits?

Re: Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

#120

Post by olyjohn »

Karunamon wrote: post #93
mywittyname wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a myth, or at least a minor contribution. BetaMax housings were very small, so they didn't have enough capacity for feature films unless they were run at 1/2 or 1/3 speed, which reduced quality. The thing is, VHS could also be run slower to improve run times, but instead of maxing out at 90m, they could run for almost 250m for tapes about at the same price. Tapes with longer run times eventually came…

Something I've heard brought up regarding the length is that early Betamax couldn't tape the average sports game, while early VHS could. I'd imagine that was a big selling point.

The early Betamax recorders didn't have a timer on them. Plus the tapes were super short. So if you had a show at 3pm you wanted to tape, you had to be there at 3pm to push the record button, then be stuck with only 90 minutes of recorded content.
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