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WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

webkit.org

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Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#141

Post by auslander »

fapjacks wrote: post #107
tialaramex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what does that mean? YouTube keeps a history list, which I download and periodically reset. If it didn't I would need to add some sort of Firefox add-on that remembered which videos I'd seen. What else are they "tracking"? Does YouTube have tracking on other sites (like Facebook, Twitter etc)? I haven't seen anything like that. You can switch the history off, I presume that would work even without Premium, but it…

Well, for starters, now they're tracking that you are willing to pay a ransom. That's the same kind of knowledge value as spammers get when a user clicks the "unsubscribe" link in one of their emails.

I found the best method against spam is to disable download of remote images in email client. Having no viewing confirmation, spam slowly stops.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#142

Post by om2 »

ec109685 wrote: post #133
om2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually pretty hard to do this. You still need some way to consistently identify the same user across different sites. Stateful tracking, fingerprinting, and link decoration are the only ways we know of to do this and we have our sights set on all of them.

Isn’t link decoration an intractable problem? Ban query params and people switch to matrix params. Ban that and they subtly include it in the seo friendly text, band that and… It just seems somewhat wrong that a browser with a huge market share doesn’t use any standards / rfc process and invents new ways of blocking tracking / breaking agreed upon specifications from release to release in isolation.

We have a partial mitigation and it does not involve stripping query params.

We'll be doing more stuff in standards first / in parallel now that more browsers are actively engaged in reducing tracking.

A lot of the more extreme thing we'll only do for sites that we've classified as a tracker. Other browsers put identified trackers in all kinds of penalty boxes that aren't fully defined by standards yet. (We happen to do the identification using machine learning instead of a curated block list.)

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#143

Post by feanaro »

geofft wrote: post #47
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? I mean, maybe the answer is that those ads were only profitable because of the novelty factor and now that we have metrics we know they don't work, or at least don't work anywhere close to how much they cost. But I do miss things like the webcomics running their own ad network, Google's textual ads…

> Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it?

Yeah, the old web was in many ways better than the new web so I'd gladly lose ads and go back to the old web in the process.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#144

Post by ignoramous »

Strange for a page espousing anti-tracking [0] to load media in from apple.com. Granted Mozilla's page [1] is even a worse offender with google-analytics and newrelic embeds.

Really makes you think what really drives the underlying narrative for such initiatives at corporates if not sabotaging competitors? OpenDNS founder, u/davidu, pointed out that DNS over HTTPS, something that takes aim at trackers and advocates privacy, also, in fact, had support of BigAdTech [2].

The content blocker ecosystem has been fighting the dragnet for a long time without expecting anything in return save for examples like Brave and Adblock. It'd be a shame to see those subject to embrace, extend, extinguish.

> And we will create new web technologies to re-enable specific non-harmful practices without reintroducing tracking capabilities.

I wonder what this means. Another standard that AdTech can rally behind? Or, Apple's way of wrestling control away from AdTech? Remember, not long ago Apple disallowed 3p browsers for a long time, on AppStore...and they are likely going to act as gate-keepers here, as well?

> we will typically prioritize user benefits over preserving current website practices. We believe that that is the role of a web browser, also known as the user agent.

Where have I heard that before? [3]

And now... what about apps on AppStore? When do we get anti-tracking measures there? Pretty soon, would be really great, because that's a present and clear danger, in my eyes, wrt privacy... but one that hurts Apple's bottomline?

[0] https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Anti_tracking_policy

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18257318

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20542656

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#145

Post by bogomipz »

jesstaa wrote: post #106

I expect that tracking will just move to being proxied server side. It will be more annoying for the people setting it up but services will spring up to help. Little will change in the advertising and tracking space.

Could you elaborate on how "tracking will just move to being proxied server side" works vs what we have today? I'm genuinely curious what those services will entail. Thanks.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#146

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

downandout wrote: post #86
peanutz454 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason people just have an aversion to paying for stuff they use. Facebook's revenue per user is less than 7$, I don't use facebook, but do not mind paying that little for something I use instead of getting tracked wherever I go. Similarly Google's service that I use like gmail and photos are easily worth about 7$ per month. I would pay if they said they will stop tracking me. I don't know about youtube.

Google makes $21 on average per US user per month [1], almost all of which comes from advertising. Would you pay $21/mo for your Google services? [1] https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-every...

I’d love to pay £20 a month for a search engine that had results as good as Google, didn’t track me, and behaved responsibly in encouraging a plural web.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#148

Post by po »

A first party is a website that a user is intentionally and knowingly visiting, as displayed by the URL field of the browser, and the set of resources on the web operated by the same organization. In practice, we consider resources to belong to the same party if they are part of the same registrable domain: a public suffix plus one additional label. Example: site.example, www.site.example, and s.u.b.site.example are all the same party since site.example is their shared registrable domain.

A third party is any party that does not fall within the definition of first party above.

This policy doesn't distinguish between companies that own multiple top level domains. I understand that it may be technically hard to figure out but at the policy level are two domains owned by one company really third party to each other?

Are example.com and example.us really always different first parties? What about apple.com and iCloud.com? Or those redirect chains that happen after logging into google such that login cookies are set on youtube.com and whatnot?

It does say 'in practice' but I feel like this is mistaking a technical limitation that it's hard to know if two TLD's are controlled by the same legal entity for a policy.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#149

Post by danielscrubs »

joosters wrote: post #140
danielscrubs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve bought zero products via google ads, except the case when I search for a company name and their official homepage is the top sponsored result. Which is insane. And yet, my eyeballs looking at text with less text than a tweet is worth 21 USD. It feels like Google disrupted, but it’s far away from being optimal for companies.

Just because you've not bought something by clicking on an ad doesn't mean that the advertising has changed your purchasing habits. ...unless you are magically immune from advertising?

I saw a coke sign three hours ago outside. I’ve been surfing the net for one hour and don’t remember a single ad. I don’t use adblockers.

I’m not saying ads don’t work. I’m saying Google Ads are ready to in turn be disrupted.

Especially with bots running amok...

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#150

Post by feanaro »

joosters wrote: post #140
danielscrubs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve bought zero products via google ads, except the case when I search for a company name and their official homepage is the top sponsored result. Which is insane. And yet, my eyeballs looking at text with less text than a tweet is worth 21 USD. It feels like Google disrupted, but it’s far away from being optimal for companies.

Just because you've not bought something by clicking on an ad doesn't mean that the advertising has changed your purchasing habits. ...unless you are magically immune from advertising?

And now we get into magical, unprovable territory. You can't prove the ads don't work so we better continue the status quo!
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