Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

Post by chaz6 » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

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…

Post by robin_reala » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

krono wrote: post #23

georgyo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Anonymous metrics, just the basics to help us keep track of service availability. Oh and a unique device identifier along with some information about your hardware and OS. Well... and your IP and connection times of course. Don't worry though, the marketing websites of the commercial services we use to gather and analyse this data say they're keeping your data very safe and secure! Your privacy means a lot to us.

Post by Radim » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #19

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 advert…

Post by pksebben » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

epitactic wrote: post #30

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…

> But what can we do to treat the cause, instead of just the symptoms? By affecting the bottom line, increasing expenses and/or decreasing profits. > If they stop working (or rather work less – it's a spectrum) AdNauseam is an interesting attempt in this space - a browser plugin to automatically "click every ad to fight surveillance" (their words). By clicking everything, clicks become less valuable, at least in theo…

Post by haliskerbas » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

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...