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A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

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Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#111

Post by hedora »

jefftk wrote: post #95
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #36

Funny how there is no (meaningful) user representation at W3C. Perhaps Wendy Seltzer is the closest to a user representative. A lawyer who is a Perl programmer, according to her Wikipedia profile. The arguments against Big Tech the smaller ad tech folks are raising sound legit, but obviously they are not being made in good faith. Big Tech has no more respect for user privacy than companies like Rosewell's. They are a…

> What does Google provide. We know they are fingerpringing on a mass scale. Why do you say that? I'm not aware of any situations where Google targets ads based on fingerprinting, and if they did I probably would have come across it. And in March, Google Ads committed that "once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we…

“Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.”

Still unacceptable. This implies psychological manipulation, price discrimination, automated racism, etc, are all still in scope.

Also, if you log into google, they’ll still track you for ad targeting. Finally, this wording implies the privacy preserving profile can be linked to your primary identity if you momentarily log in.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#112

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #110
lumost wrote: post #48

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#113

Post by hedora »

jefftk wrote: post #96
pentagrama wrote: post #46

> One of Google's proposed standards — Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC for short — would eliminate the ability for advertisers to track specific users' web behavior with cookies. No, Floc will not "eliminate the ability for advertisers to track specific users with cookies", the phase out of third party cookies on Chrome will do that, Google needs something to replace the current tracking method for his ad busi…

They're not really separate things: Chrome has said removing third party cookies is dependent on finding good replacements. This goes back at least to https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-... : After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy,…

> have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds

Well, that’s ominous. Presumably the plan is to close source Chrome or do some DRM thing to prevent sites from rendering if the Privacy Sandbox has been tampered with?

Great.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#114

Post by marderfarker2 »

samplatt wrote: post #100
rodgerd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tipping point was noticing that about 30% of my DNS traffic on my home network was Android devices calling out to tracking and advertising networks. Moving to iOS has dropped that dramatically, more than an order of magnitude. The fact that we're now seeing multiple lawsuits, PR campaigns, and lobbying to damage Apple since they put a requirement to disclose privacy details in the App Store shows how much surveill…

An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.

Or you can use nextdns and have DNS protection on any network you’re on.

They have a paid option that gives you a higher query quota.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#115

Post by summerlight »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #36

Funny how there is no (meaningful) user representation at W3C. Perhaps Wendy Seltzer is the closest to a user representative. A lawyer who is a Perl programmer, according to her Wikipedia profile. The arguments against Big Tech the smaller ad tech folks are raising sound legit, but obviously they are not being made in good faith. Big Tech has no more respect for user privacy than companies like Rosewell's. They are a…

> What does Google provide. We know they are fingerpringing on a mass scale. There is zero transparency.

Interesting. I work at Google ads and I am not aware of fingerprinting on a mass scale. AFAIK, all the tracking is done with cookies. Not a lawyer and purely my opinion but IIUC, DoubleClick acquisition made it practically impossible to do fingerprinting since Google is not allowed to join first party and third party cookies and fingerprinting imposes significant risks to violate that condition.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#116

Post by kyralis »

samplatt wrote: post #100
rodgerd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tipping point was noticing that about 30% of my DNS traffic on my home network was Android devices calling out to tracking and advertising networks. Moving to iOS has dropped that dramatically, more than an order of magnitude. The fact that we're now seeing multiple lawsuits, PR campaigns, and lobbying to damage Apple since they put a requirement to disclose privacy details in the App Store shows how much surveill…

An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed. Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.

Apple's effective tax rate is actually higher than many of its peers, and higher than the sector on average.

All multinationals need strong tax enforcement, but this isn't actually one where Apple is really any worse than others (and better than many).

https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AAPL/explorer/effect_tax_rate

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#117

Post by notriddle »

gwbas1c wrote: post #88

Honestly, this makes me wonder if the browser manufacturers will just "take their ball and go home." It's probably easier for them to just get together outside of the W3C and make up a new standards committee. From what I understand, nothing in the W3C is binding, so there would be no repercussions whatsoever.

They already did that, forming WHATWG.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#118

Post by iee77e73y »

lumost wrote: post #48

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

Out of curiosity what about having those features changed your opinion? I'm in a similar camp to your original viewpoint and what stood out from your story is that it doesn't seem like you discovered any significant damage so much as just gained new features to limit what others labeled as damage on the off chance they're right. Not trying to be confrontational but I feel like, when I lurk here, my view is the minority and so I think it's interesting to hear the thought process of a convert from my camp.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#119

Post by top_post »

o8r3oFTZPE wrote: post #98
lumost wrote: post #48

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

Progress. What would be neat is to see how much data Apple is collecting about its customers after purchase. Why wouldnt we want to know this. Could Apple provide option to hide true email address, tell app do not track and give visibility into data being sniffed without also collecting vast amounts of user data itself. We cannot answer that question until we see the data they collect. I used to be of the mind that A…

As someone who just bought their first iPad last week, I wonder the exact same thing. A nice cuddle from Apple telling me how they're protecting me from evil, but you hold all the same shit about me. So now I just trust a _different_ for profit company? Until when? At one stage Google wasn't evil, now it's evil as fuck.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#120

Post by pseudalopex »

historyloop wrote: post #107
runawaybottle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Can I get a lick of your ice-cream’. Their ads have gotten good all of a sudden again (the irony of that being the whole ad is to stop other ads). https://youtu.be/8w4qPUSG17Y

I don't care much about tracking, but this ad is very effective. It's kinda dishonest about what tracking is (it's not bunch of people making job and purchase decisions for you, come on). But effective.

No one made any decision for the main character. A shop employee recommended an anti itch cream. It looked like he asked her to. The others snooped and gave out his information.
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