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Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

peguero.xyz

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Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#11

Post by MrWiffles »

dang-guefever wrote: post #3

As someone with more time, I prefer to maintain a massive whitelist for my router. Daily websites receive permanent privileges, incidental websites (such as peguero.xyz) receive temporary privileges (e.g. allow traffic for the next minute), everything else is dropped. I don't have to worry about what chicanery advertising companies are up to when they can't reach me even if they tried. "So the fourth herd of deer too…

I have no idea where that literary quote is from but it’s pertinent here.

In related news, what software or tools do you use to manage that whitelist? I’ve been considering stunting similar.

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#13

Post by omnicognate »

dang-guefever wrote: post #3

As someone with more time, I prefer to maintain a massive whitelist for my router. Daily websites receive permanent privileges, incidental websites (such as peguero.xyz) receive temporary privileges (e.g. allow traffic for the next minute), everything else is dropped. I don't have to worry about what chicanery advertising companies are up to when they can't reach me even if they tried. "So the fourth herd of deer too…

How do you implement that? I have a whitelisting transparent proxy for my kids (contrary to the popular meme around here that all kids are NSA grade hackers determined to defy your every attempt to protect them, it's uncontroversial in my house and works very well). I use squid for that and have a shonky web UI I made to access the logs and update the whitelist acl. I'd like to make it more capable (stuff like temporary unblock like you mention). AFAICT the only way to do such things is writing a squid "helper" that runs as a separate process (/processes). Is that what you're doing?

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#14

Post by Radim »

I applaud the effort (Boston FTW!). But what can we do to treat the cause, instead of just the symptoms?

Stopping big-tech's tracking is cool, but strictly inferior to removing their incentive to track you.

How to do that? The ads are valuable for a reason – they work. If they stop working (or rather work less – it's a spectrum), then the collected data becomes just impotent bits filling up some HDD somewhere.

I feel the fix will be more along the lines of improving individual psychology and mental wellbeing, rather than entering the arms race of adversarial technology to block packet traffic (or whatever).

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#15

Post by reaperducer »

georgyo wrote: post #9
blakesterz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of server logs between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network I've not heard of this, what sites are giving logs to networks?

Shipping logs would be an extreme breach in my mind. But I can BS. Without a cross site unique identifier, the logs would not be usable across different sites... Though... I guess a browser fingerprint could be used as a non-centralized method to generate that unique key...

Login name, email address, credit card number. Lots of ways for companies to get together like this to follow you around the web and apps. All invisibly. And you'd never know it.

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#18

Post by shepik »

dang-guefever wrote: post #3

As someone with more time, I prefer to maintain a massive whitelist for my router. Daily websites receive permanent privileges, incidental websites (such as peguero.xyz) receive temporary privileges (e.g. allow traffic for the next minute), everything else is dropped. I don't have to worry about what chicanery advertising companies are up to when they can't reach me even if they tried. "So the fourth herd of deer too…

Honest question: is it worth it? Why would you spend your time on managing that temporary white list? Do you think that time is wasted, or not? (I apologize if my phrasing is a bit rude, but i'm really curious about that, and want to understand your thinking)

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#19

Post by contravariant »

Radim wrote: post #14

I applaud the effort (Boston FTW!). But what can we do to treat the cause, instead of just the symptoms? Stopping big-tech's tracking is cool, but strictly inferior to removing their incentive to track you . How to do that? The ads are valuable for a reason – they work. If they stop working (or rather work less – it's a spectrum), then the collected data becomes just impotent bits filling up some HDD somewhere. I fee…

The tricky bit here is that advertisers don't need their ads to work, they just need to convince their customers they do. Even if there are reasons to question the metrics used to measure effectiveness (see e.g. [1]) this is all meaningless if ad companies still succeed in convincing people they are selling something of value. Which ironically does mean that one way or another advertising companies are good at advertising something it just might not be the thing they're getting paid for.

[1]: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h... [1, hn]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#20

Post by skinkestek »

Radim wrote: post #14

I applaud the effort (Boston FTW!). But what can we do to treat the cause, instead of just the symptoms? Stopping big-tech's tracking is cool, but strictly inferior to removing their incentive to track you . How to do that? The ads are valuable for a reason – they work. If they stop working (or rather work less – it's a spectrum), then the collected data becomes just impotent bits filling up some HDD somewhere. I fee…

> The ads are valuable for a reason – they work.

I'll remind everyone that from my experience (starting a web shop and also being a target of ads) there is a lot to be said about ads. Ubers observations a few months back was no big surprise for me.

We turned off one particular network that according to their statistics were involved in most of our sales. Result: too small to measure.

Same goes for my observations as a consumer: I'm fairly certain what ad I get shown is decided not by how relevant it is but by who is dumb enough to pay the most for it without measuring results.

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