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The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

the-tls.co.uk

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Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#101

Post by kodablah »

vermilingua wrote: post #76
amelius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should write and maintain a library that can scrape Facebook accounts. This library could be used by software that can help people stay away from FB without the downside of missing out on things like events or groups.

This would be impossible to maintain. Facebook regularly changes the layout of pages, and mangles the DOM to defeat adblocking, and also likely take anti scraping measures.

There are other approaches like accessibility APIs and text selection based on positioning and visibility.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#102

Post by lightswitch05 »

rndomsrmn wrote: post #100
lightswitch05 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look the domains being used for the consent and saw an interesting JavaScript name: 'messagingWithoutDetection.js'. Looking into it more, I found the documentation [1], there is this disgusting paragraph: > The Dialogue Javascript communicates with the Sourcepoint messaging server on a subdomain of the site. The benefit of doing that is to allow messaging cookies to be “first party” and thus, circumventing S…

dnscrypt-proxy is already supporting CNAME blocking and full domain based blocking (*.adhost.com), something that is still missing in Pi-Hole.

Pi-Hole does support regex and wildcard based blocking

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#103

Post by rndomsrmn »

lightswitch05 wrote: post #102
rndomsrmn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dnscrypt-proxy is already supporting CNAME blocking and full domain based blocking (*.adhost.com), something that is still missing in Pi-Hole.

Pi-Hole does support regex and wildcard based blocking

regex is _extremely_ resource inefficient and should not be used with large sets of rules. Dnsmasqs domain redirecting feature (address=/adhost.com/#) is not supported by pihole.

Is there any other way to wildcard block full domains in Pi-Hole?

Look for example in your list: d41.co, admaster.com.cn, mixmarket.biz chances are extremely slim that all (current) hostnames of those type of domains are currently being blocked.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#104

Post by lightswitch05 »

rndomsrmn wrote: post #103
lightswitch05 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pi-Hole does support regex and wildcard based blocking

regex is _extremely_ resource inefficient and should not be used with large sets of rules. Dnsmasqs domain redirecting feature (address=/adhost.com/#) is not supported by pihole. Is there any other way to wildcard block full domains in Pi-Hole? Look for example in your list: d41.co, admaster.com.cn, mixmarket.biz chances are extremely slim that all (current) hostnames of those type of domains are currently being bloc…

It is resource inefficient, which is why PiHole supports it, but does not allow you to subscribe to list containing regex, as that would quickly make it unusable. I'm not sure how Dnsmasqs would be accomplishing this feature without some sort of pattern matching logic - which would have the same inefficiencies. Basically O(N) where N is the number of domains/patterns that should be blocked. There could certainly be a cache to keep track of matched/unmatched queries, but I would imagine with the modern web the average case would still be very close to O(N). Just speculation.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#105

Post by allendoerfer »

3733782263 wrote: post #78
jwr wrote: post #49

Oh, the irony of this article slamming me in the face with a sleazy "We need your consent" dialog with intentionally confusing options and sub-dialogs... My "consent" is being forced out of me so that roughly ~100 (at a first glance) "partners" can invade my privacy and learn about my browsing habits. By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices.

>By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices. I'm sure this stern talking to really made them evaluate their life choices. We need more people on HN to take a stand like this, downvotes be damned. We all have to be the change we want to see.

Working with an analytics team, a sentiment I get is:

"We have a contract with [analytics company]. They are not allowed to look at the data."

When you suggest that a contract might not be as good as physical limitations hosting it yourself give you, they follow up with something like:

"Well, then AWS/Azure/etc. could look at it!"

What I found drives the increase of tracking on the web in big corporations, is simply the number of teams, who want data. Data is used to play internal politics. And it is easier to get a new vendor in, than to get data from a hostile team.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#106

Post by rndomsrmn »

rndomsrmn wrote: post #103
lightswitch05 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pi-Hole does support regex and wildcard based blocking

regex is _extremely_ resource inefficient and should not be used with large sets of rules. Dnsmasqs domain redirecting feature (address=/adhost.com/#) is not supported by pihole. Is there any other way to wildcard block full domains in Pi-Hole? Look for example in your list: d41.co, admaster.com.cn, mixmarket.biz chances are extremely slim that all (current) hostnames of those type of domains are currently being bloc…

Dnsmasq 'address=' function is just a substr() call, which is as fast as 'normal' hostname blocking (host == "adhost.com"). No regex magic is required there.

You are not able to block something like 'ads.%.adhost.com', but only (prepending wildcard) '%.ads.adhost.com', which in practice will cover almost all scenarios where random subdomains are used by adhosts.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#107

Post by mdre »

jgacook wrote: post #7

I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now. Today as I was browsing I saw several Scientology ads. I know Facebook doesn't have an agenda per se - you have the money, they have the adspace - but I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized. Facebook will never change unless they are forced to. We have signed away perh…

Having deleted Facebook 3 years ago made my social life miserable. Any time I tried to join a real-life group activity I was always the one person being out of the loop and I had to pester a single person I chose, constantly, to get any updates. So after a few groups and gigs like that I finally chose to rejoin Facebook. One thing I tried to keep me out of addiction this time, was to unsubscribe from everything, so my wall is always either empty or only showing updates from the current group I'm participating in. And thus I have no real desire to scroll FB, cause nothing really happens there for me - automatically. What really bugged was that none of my closest friends really wanted to chat with me for those few years - they seemed to have a real mental barrier against switching to the regular Messages app.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#108

Post by lightswitch05 »

rndomsrmn wrote: post #106
rndomsrmn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

regex is _extremely_ resource inefficient and should not be used with large sets of rules. Dnsmasqs domain redirecting feature (address=/adhost.com/#) is not supported by pihole. Is there any other way to wildcard block full domains in Pi-Hole? Look for example in your list: d41.co, admaster.com.cn, mixmarket.biz chances are extremely slim that all (current) hostnames of those type of domains are currently being bloc…

Dnsmasq 'address=' function is just a substr() call, which is as fast as 'normal' hostname blocking (host == "adhost.com"). No regex magic is required there. You are not able to block something like 'ads.%.adhost.com', but only (prepending wildcard) '%.ads.adhost.com', which in practice will cover almost all scenarios where random subdomains are used by adhosts.

Pihole uses a forked version of dnsmasq they named 'Pi-hole FTL engine'. I don't believe there are any features of dnsmasq that cannot be used with the PiHole - but how to configure it to work alongside of PiHole might not be as obvious.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#109

Post by SkyBelow »

jwr wrote: post #49

Oh, the irony of this article slamming me in the face with a sleazy "We need your consent" dialog with intentionally confusing options and sub-dialogs... My "consent" is being forced out of me so that roughly ~100 (at a first glance) "partners" can invade my privacy and learn about my browsing habits. By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices.

>By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices.

I think the logic underlying this sentiment is never consistently applied. Do we call out the people working on Tor or encryption because of how it is used by some to cause harm? Do we call out the other negative results of a person's job (tax money going to a war machine is pretty common for those in the US)? Do we call out the person cooking burgers at the local fast food joint for the effects our fast food consumption has on our health as a whole? Do we call out doctors who are members of groups that limit the supply of doctors, thus increasing prices and resulting in people getting less healthcare coverage?

What about the people who are against unions, which may be a factor in why some choose not to risk their job opposing implementing data gathering on their own website?

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#110

Post by thinkmassive »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
jgacook wrote: post #7

I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now. Today as I was browsing I saw several Scientology ads. I know Facebook doesn't have an agenda per se - you have the money, they have the adspace - but I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized. Facebook will never change unless they are forced to. We have signed away perh…

> I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Faceb…

I would also add that, on the rare occasion when you do need/want to log in, use https://mbasic.facebook.com/
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