51–60 of 140 posts
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…
Can an app just use the CT logs? I'm a little out of my depth on this topic.
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…
Though I haven't thought much about what you bring up or that principal, thanks for sharing.
Ultimately google can render ads through a middleman iframe they control, so even going back to a basic impression count without a bunch of JS controls and measurement they still have lots of tools especially since they have large amount of log in data on their domains only they can verify.
I remember when I was just learning the internet doing something like this. copy pasting html (before it was all rendered with JS) to edit things to make them my own. I used an adsense account to render mesothelioma keywords and hit refresh a bunch; got paid a small amount, my parents were impressed a 13 year old got checks from google ;) There's a ton more learning resources now, but the days of copy pasting basic website html is gone.
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…
I've read plenty of claims that it's for increasing lock-in on their analytics platform... But why would people selling ads want to lock their clients on a free loss-leader?
It would be nice if there was an effort that pulled the public/prviate keys hidden in the binaries of apps like facebook/google and decrypted the traffic for inspection/blocking. Rewriting would be nice but everything seems to be certificate pinned now. Can an app just use the CT logs? I'm a little out of my depth on this topic.
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…
As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…
Anec-data: visiting the in-laws in a different part of the country, so my device and location is 'known' to have geographically moved by tracking, they searched for garages and glazing. We return home, and every advert is for garages and glazing.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…
> It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech. Including Facebook, apparently. About 90% of Instagram ads were irrelevant to me for about two years. Then I mentioned an interest in photography in a private conversation, now 75% of ads are photography-related.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…
Since I've been "reassured" that we're not being listened to by smart speakers, I can only assume that familial links i.e. the 'facebook graph', are also exploited by ad companies now as well. Anec-data: visiting the in-laws in a different part of the country, so my device and location is 'known' to have geographically moved by tracking, they searched for garages and glazing. We return home, and every advert is for g…
I keep cam/mic access switched off a lot for this reason, and I've only seen generic denials/refusals that it is or could happen but nothing concrete, much like the pre-snowden outlook towards internet surveillance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since I've been "reassured" that we're not being listened to by smart speakers, I can only assume that familial links i.e. the 'facebook graph', are also exploited by ad companies now as well. Anec-data: visiting the in-laws in a different part of the country, so my device and location is 'known' to have geographically moved by tracking, they searched for garages and glazing. We return home, and every advert is for g…
What reassurances have you had about not being listened to? I keep cam/mic access switched off a lot for this reason, and I've only seen generic denials/refusals that it is or could happen but nothing concrete, much like the pre-snowden outlook towards internet surveillance.
There's been so much discussion of this theory that we'd have seen one of those by now. I have zero love for the surveillance shops, but there's just no real evidence this happens.