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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

#31

Post by samhw »

shepik wrote: post #18
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)

I think people like this see it as a 'win' – as if they, John Smith, have beaten the dastardly BigCorp. Whereas, in fact, the most that happens is a Junior Marketing Executive at BigCorp says "Right, that guy falls within the 0.5% of techy customers who make things difficult for us. Ah well, it's only been 80,000 of them, well within our margin for this month."

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

#32

Post by marketingtech »

jasode wrote: post #28
marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

>The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. But doesn't relying on the publisher's website log statistics instead of the end users' browsers introduce trust and "bad actors" problem? This has been a known "principal-agent" problem[1] for all the decades that 3rd-party ads have existed on the web. I.e. Googl…

The data is sent from the advertiser to the ad platform, not from the publisher to the ad platform. The advertiser is incentivized to send accurate data for both performance optimization and for campaign measurement purposes.

Ad fraud is a real problem in the ecosystem, but the server-side APIs are actually more secure. You have a private signed backend endpoint rather than public JS that can be injected anywhere and fed fake data by a malicious party.

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

#33

Post by mhandley »

marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

"websites and applications actively transmitting customer data to Google and Facebook."

Any website doing this for EU users without their consent is going to run into GDPR issues very quickly indeed.

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

#34

Post by jasode »

marketingtech wrote: post #32
jasode wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. But doesn't relying on the publisher's website log statistics instead of the end users' browsers introduce trust and "bad actors" problem? This has been a known "principal-agent" problem[1] for all the decades that 3rd-party ads have existed on the web. I.e. Googl…

The data is sent from the advertiser to the ad platform, not from the publisher to the ad platform. The advertiser is incentivized to send accurate data for both performance optimization and for campaign measurement purposes. Ad fraud is a real problem in the ecosystem, but the server-side APIs are actually more secure. You have a private signed backend endpoint rather than public JS that can be injected anywhere and…

>The data is sent from the advertiser to the ad platform, not from the publisher to the ad platform.

Then we're talking about different things. This thread has packet filtering to prevent user behavior being sent to Google. For example, see recent thread about Google's click tracking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28672625

The key is that click choice data on Google's search results page is never seen by advertisers so your explanation of "next gen tracking is by advertisers calling APIs to ad networks" -- isn't relevant to that scenario.

Then another level of tracking underneath Google's visibility of click behavior on its own search page is the website (publisher/contentcreator) recipient of the click. Whether any advertisers see this downstream click statistic on an ad network depends on the particular website. E.g. a content creator website might have tracking that sends data to Google domain "googleanalytics.com" -- but no advertisers.

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

#36

Post by falcolas »

jasode wrote: post #28
marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

>The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. But doesn't relying on the publisher's website log statistics instead of the end users' browsers introduce trust and "bad actors" problem? This has been a known "principal-agent" problem[1] for all the decades that 3rd-party ads have existed on the web. I.e. Googl…

Couldn't this be at least partially solved by the advertising agency still embedding tracking code into the web page, and the tracking payloads are included in the web owner's reports back to the advertising agency?

The data could be safeguarded by a cryptographic signature, though there's some trust paths that would need to be solved.

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

#37

Post by falcolas »

mhandley wrote: post #33
marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

"websites and applications actively transmitting customer data to Google and Facebook." Any website doing this for EU users without their consent is going to run into GDPR issues very quickly indeed.

I'm sure that, like most other consent prompts, it will be opt-out with lots of sketchy dark patterns (like artificial waits) to ensure you don't opt out.

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

#39

Post by trasz »

marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

So what we really need is a way to easily and cheaply host “virtual clients”, bots to generate traffic so that real clients disappear in the noise?

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

#40

Post by Nextgrid »

falcolas wrote: post #37
mhandley wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"websites and applications actively transmitting customer data to Google and Facebook." Any website doing this for EU users without their consent is going to run into GDPR issues very quickly indeed.

I'm sure that, like most other consent prompts, it will be opt-out with lots of sketchy dark patterns (like artificial waits) to ensure you don't opt out.

That's actually still in breach of the regulation. However you are right to have concerns as the GDPR is not being enforced seriously.
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