I am fascinated that the popular press has described this as Google adding privacy (which is how google describes it of course) where really it’s a massive escalation of their spying network.
Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
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Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#42Citing adblock feels like clickbait. Google Tag Manager can't run ads so I don't follow the comparison. Marketing analytics could always side-step anti-adblocking tools through server-side tracking.
Server side tracking based on what, server access logs? That's not particularly helpful compared to the info you get with clientside analytics libraries.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
And all cookies, else pixel trackers and serverside analytics can still identify your device. Don't need JS to set a cookie.
They can identify a device. Without JavaScript, you don't have nasty client-side hints telling sites exactly what OS, CPUs, Graphics Cards, etc. With a VPN and changing your UA, no JavaScript does a pretty good job at preventing sites from tracking you.
User agent strings tend to reveal the operating system and CPU architecture.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can identify a device. Without JavaScript, you don't have nasty client-side hints telling sites exactly what OS, CPUs, Graphics Cards, etc. With a VPN and changing your UA, no JavaScript does a pretty good job at preventing sites from tracking you.
User agent strings tend to reveal the operating system and CPU architecture.
That is why I mentioned changing your UA. Unfortunately, with JS that is not enough due to client-side hints and other information leaked.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#45As someone who has spent a lot of time on both sides of this, I think this is a great outcome, personally. The most annoying part of ad-tech for me, as a user, was the fact that I was running all sorts of random javascript, any bit of which could blow up performance on my browser. As someone who used to lead an e-commerce operation, I hated running all of this crap in my users' browsers because I knew it would get bl…
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Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#46I am not sure OP has the proper background to discuss blocking ad+tracking techniques. Such utilities do a lot more than blocking domains. Blocking domains is just first step as it's the simplest and cheapest win. Signatures/Content inspection being sent can go a long way and can accurately identify patterns.
Pihole.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#47God damn... this is it, this is the end-game. There's no way to fight this unless you customize and maintain blocking scripts for each individual website. Yes, websites could always have done this, but the REST (CDN-bypassing) requests' cost and the manual maintenance for the telemetry endpoints and storage was an impediment that Google just gives them a drop-in solution for :( I think Google is happy to eat some of…
"I don't have the time or energy to block JavaScript and/or manually inspect each domain's requests to figure out if they use server-side tracking or not."
By default, I don't run JavaScript. I don't see blocking JS as a problem - in fact, it's a blessing as the web is blinding fast without it - and also most of the ads just simply disappear if JS is not running.
On occasions when I need JS (only about 3-5% of sites) it's just a matter of toggling it on and refreshing the page. I've been working this way for at least 15 years - that's when I first realized JS was ruining my web experience.
I'm now so spoilt by the advantages of the non-JS world that I don't think I could ever return. I'm always acutely reminded of the fact whenever I use someone else's machine.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#48Wouldn't it be possible for a potential client-side blocker for this to intercept the gtag() method invoked on the client side ("Tag Manager web container"), even if that function is provided by a script hosted on the website owner's domain, as Google recommends[1]? [1] https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...
Highly doubtful the method would continue to be called "gtag"; any js bundling / minification would replace that with a randomly generated string, and it's just as easy to randomize the server-side api endpoint url, making this virtually impossible to block (maybe a pattern analysis on the data being transmitted, but that can also be encrypted with random algorithms and keys, beyond recognition).
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#49Anything that can be reliably identified across multiple websites can be blocked. So here we'd just block "tag manager web container" no?
The article explains that the info can be transmitted by any JavaScript library.
Having spent a good amount of time looking at potential JavaScript malware that ended up being repackaged GTM, I'm pretty confident anyone who says they're "blocking Google Tag Manager" has their head in the sand.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#50God damn... this is it, this is the end-game. There's no way to fight this unless you customize and maintain blocking scripts for each individual website. Yes, websites could always have done this, but the REST (CDN-bypassing) requests' cost and the manual maintenance for the telemetry endpoints and storage was an impediment that Google just gives them a drop-in solution for :( I think Google is happy to eat some of…
Aren't browsers shifting to a per-domain cookie jar?
While you can never prevent one specific site from tracking you, this still doesn't (directly) allow your activity on Site A to be linked to activity on Site B, does it?
Of course, fingerprinting combined with IP addresses will ultimately allow something that comes very close to it, so the current state (a few hundred trackers per website, all ending up harmlessly incrementing the adblocker's counter) is better for privacy for power-users, but I'm not sure if this is the big "game over".