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Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

brave.com

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Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#81

Post by shadowgovt »

627467 wrote: post #48

I don't want to be overly critical here but If we rush to call this 'widespread surveillance' (intended or not) I worry that we'll quickly start losing words/expressions to describe the stuff that snowden unveiled or whethever the government does in China...

The source for the story clearly has a specific political bias regarding its interpretation of privacy.

That political bias doesn't impinge on the facts of the report though (merely that Brave believes it's worth surfacing loudly).

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#83

Post by salawat »

Nursie wrote: post #59
dboreham wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty hard core to invent a whole local government for test purposes..

Ha, this came up the other day. Non technical guy suggests we just insert 'Test' into the distinguished name of certificates we want to mark as 'not for production'. We pointed out that one of the many reasons that's a terrible idea is that the Test Valley exists.

Humorous solution: Add test_not_the_valley to all non-prod certificates.

I'll see myself out.

On a more serious note:

Add "testing", "dev", "qa", "internal", or "non-prod" instead. At least those are my goto's for establishing multi-environment separation of configuration data through namespace separation.

It isn't an inherently bad way of going about things as long as you keep it consistent and do your best to automate it.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#84

Post by dspillett »

basilgohar wrote: post #27
butler14 wrote: post #20

This is one of the downsides of using an ad-blocker It's literally never occurred to me, as a user of these websites, that local government websites would even have adverts on them -- let alone Google AdSense / junk from Google's Display Network.

How is this a downside to using an ad-blocker? I think it's quite the opposite. An ad-blocker would prevent most of this external JS from being loaded.

A key concern I have (though it doesn't stop me blocking ads) is that I won't know if a site is normally full of the worst sort of ads (malware install attempts, auto-playing video & audio, tracking up the wazoo & back, ...) and I could send a link to people who are going to be affected because they are not protected by similar blocking.

So not a downside directly, but a risk of lacking awareness.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#86

Post by JohnFen »

mpeg wrote: post #30
gruez wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>From my network requests I see: >[...] >Nothing out of the ordinary here looks like you're not picking up a bunch of requests. maybe you have ublock? Here are some domains that aren't on your list: www.google-analytics.com script.hotjar.com cse.google.com vars.hotjar.com www.facebook.com stats.g.doubleclick.net static.hotjar.com connect.facebook.net

None of those really stand out as being problematic. Google Analytics, Hotjar are measurement tools. CSE is google's custom search endpoint, stats.*.doubleclick.net is a doubleclick for publishers endpoint (Google's ad server) and doesn't mean much by itself, it doesn't automatically show ads from third parties or send your data to anyone. The Facebook tags are sadly quite popular these days, I do agree those are not…

GA is absolutely problematic. It's one of Google's main spy mechanisms. I know less about Hotjar, but it's reasonable to be nervous about any analytics package that is sending data off to a third party.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#87

Post by dspillett »

JohnFen wrote: post #80
lozaning wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've so successfully created a personal technology environment that hides ads, that I have no situational awareness about what these companies are up to. If someone out there is selling my healthcare data and running ads around it directed towards just me, I'd never know, but I'd want to.

So block tracking, not ads.

Unfortunately the two are often intimately linked, so that is not really practical.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#88

Post by MrAlex94 »

gruez wrote: post #24
MrAlex94 wrote: post #5

So I have read this report, but it would be good if there were some example URLs of where this is happening. Take for instance Lambeth's website ( https://www.lambeth.gov.uk ). I've browsed through a few public facing pages and the council tax payment pages. The report says Lambeth shows 1 real time bidding, 1 social and 5 Google "trackers". From my network requests I see: -> Google Translate and its resources (CSS e…

>From my network requests I see: >[...] >Nothing out of the ordinary here looks like you're not picking up a bunch of requests. maybe you have ublock? Here are some domains that aren't on your list: www.google-analytics.com script.hotjar.com cse.google.com vars.hotjar.com www.facebook.com stats.g.doubleclick.net static.hotjar.com connect.facebook.net

Hmm, not getting these. I disabled uBlock for my results. I'll see what else may be the cause.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#89

Post by JohnFen »

eclipxe wrote: post #40
foxyv wrote: post #35

Advertising is starting to edge towards the side of "Universal Evil." We need some serious regulatory controls on this stuff because it is getting out of control. GDPR is a step in the right direction, but sites and advertisers are pretty much flouting it at this point.

Why is it starting to edge towards "Universal Evil"?

Because its spying tentacles keep expanding to more and more places.

Re: Surveillance on UK council websites [pdf]

#90

Post by theseadroid »

paulcarroty wrote: post #85

UK has the biggest number of cameras per m^2 in world. Sadly, it's common pattern. Cool business idea: Mr Robot style hoodie with tracking protection.

And only by then you'll realize how many people don't really care and the ones wearing the hoodie will be singled out with special attention from state.
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