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Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

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Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#331

Post by PhantomGremlin »

gigel82 wrote: post #25

God 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…

Maybe using an archive.is-like service

No that has turned to shit (for me anyway). Used to be fine, now presents a captcha when JS off. Okay so I switch from Firefox to Safari (where I leave JS on) and it still presents a captcha. I'd rather use the original site with JS than solve captchas.

That has been my consistent recent experience for a multitude of those.

or a Tor-like service

I've never used Tor, but aren't there a lot of complaints of repetitive captchas when using it?

randomizes one's IP address and browser fingerprint

I haven't followed this closely, but didn't Apple make claims that they would soon have an opt-in service that did something like this?

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#332

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

CommanderData wrote: post #250
ornornor wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privacy rights given to us by law (eg in the EU) > As a EU citizen, i hope that our ineffectual administration at least tries to fight this somehow. Of course, there is little hope. GDPR is thanks to the EU and I wouldn’t say it has no effect. It seems like you’re contradicting yourself with these two paragraphs.

GDPR has been a massive win for user/consumer rights. Its a piece of legislation law makers in the US are trying to mimic. Surprisingly the UK are trying to rid or weaken GDPR significantly after brexit. The only way to fix this problem now is through strong legislation.

Did it really make the world a better place? Most sites collect as much data as ever, but now we need many more clicks, and can't have nice things like photos from kindergarden parties anymore.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#334

Post by npteljes »

zwaps wrote: post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

How is this crazy? Server administrators could have done, and have done anything on their side of the code. Nothing changed on this front since the invention of the HTTP request.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#335

Post by mtsr »

eru wrote: post #321
mtsr wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the job of lawmakers is, intriguingly enough, deciding what’s good for voters. This would be among those things. Would voters vote for this specific law? Probably not. But they probably wouldn’t vote out the representatives who wrote it either. And arguably privacy needs to be protected for the good of society.

I'm not sure about this notion of the 'good of society'. If you believe that the 'good of society' is not what voters want, why bother with democracy at all? (Slightly besides the point: I actually do agree that people behave like idiots at the ballot booth and don't know what is good for them in this context. Luckily, people tend to be much more savvy when voting with their wallets or their feet. And as a society we…

I’m not saying it’s not what voters want, I’m saying they’re not going to vote for it. There’s a difference.

The average voter has a fairly limited horizon in terms of what they see and understand about what’s good for society. And in a democracy you elect representatives because they’re supposed to have a wider horizon and more in depth knowledge, in part because they’re on average smarter than the average voter and in part because they get to dedicate all their time to that specific job.

This means that lawmakers will sometimes have to do th8ngs the voters don’t understand they want. It’s on them to explain it to the voters. And it’s on the voters to vote them out if they still don’t agree.

As for voting with their wallets, I would have agreed say 20 years ago. But marketing has become so all-encompassing and so much money and effort has been spent making marketing stick, that I don’t think most people can make truly independent decisions anymore about many many things.

And free stuff on the internet is definitely something that most people have trouble dealing rationally with. Just look at all the free trials that hook people into costly year long subscriptions, etc etc. Let alone when it’s free in the sense that the users never pays directly but through things as ads and privacy.

My view of this is very much influenced by my being a European and EU citizen, though. And if anything, the EU is a bit of a technocracy that likes to decide for the “good of society”. And that’s not something everyone will like every time.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#336

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

zwaps wrote: post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

Is it really worse for the users? Article also mentions possible privacy benefits, as Google could prevent transmission of some data to third parties.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#337

Post by onion2k »

gigel82 wrote: post #25

God 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…

The article is from 2020, and I don't think I've ever seen a site using this approach yet. It is an egregious attempt to circumvent the Same Origin security policy in browsers that developers and privacy advocates should rightly be angry at, but it doesn't seem to have caught on. That's something to be thankful for.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#338

Post by PhantomGremlin »

zwaps wrote: post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow.

Yeah, but there are a lot of employees there who check their bank accounts twice a month and say: "Just wow".

Venial evil is easily bought.

Edit:

As a EU citizen

I really hate to even say this, but "Crazy Vlad" nearby is what true evil is about.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#339

Post by charcircuit »

sdoering wrote: post #244

Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…

>I could be able to run the proxy on any infrastructure that I like. Not only one Google's cloud offering.

This is already true.

https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#340

Post by beagle3 »

baybal2 wrote: post #285
sdoering wrote: post #244

Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…

Just block the script by its checksum, and the issue is solved

Article addresses this: google is actually encouraging users to modify said script.
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