341–350 of 902 posts
If the standard deployment will be a separate IP in the same range (Google cloud) which is also bound to a subdomain of the site I’m viewing, isn’t that an easily identifiable situation? Couldn’t blockers like unlock just block the subdomain.site.com for every site.com? Or even block all subdomain calls to Google hosts?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To what is a VPN a solution? It prevents IP tracking, but that's it. The rest of what is described here still works.
"Private Relay uses both the CONNECT and CONNECT-UDP methods in HTTP/3 to set up connections quickly. For connections to websites that support TLS or QUIC, the initial TLS handshake messages are sent in the same set of data as the proxy request" Would this not hinder the proposed mechanism discussed in the article? Edit: forgive me, for my knowledge of networking is limited and I'd like to learn more if I am incorrec…
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…
> our ineffectual administration It always saddens me to see EU citizens talk in absolutes like that. With some exceptions, and by comparison, we have some of the best governments in the world, and, for all its faults, the EU has been a huge net positive. Perpetuating these overly negative stereotypes just aids populists in replacing our good governance with the other kind that we see all over the world.
In fact, I think especially when you look at digital privacy and curbing ever more intrusive tracking practices, the EU has been THE most engaged international body by far. Of course it's a game of cat and mouse, but advertisers will do what advertisers do and when the practice is exposed don't think it'll go unnoticed.
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…
The problem is not that they measure things. The problem is that they enter the user's private area; they run code on the user's computer and probably grab information about the user too (I don't know exactly how tag managers work because I have never used one). It's like if I enter your home and start measuring things, the problem is not that I measure things, it's that I entered your private area.
Actually this article strengthens my believe that adblockers will even become more essential. I mean, even if the server decides to send some ads, the client doesn't have to show them. Or am I missing something?
The client won't be able to distinguish between ads and actual content on the website if both come from the same source.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the solution here is a technical one. This should just be solved by legislation. Google Analytics has been recently ruled illegal in multiple European countries. And either this already is illegal under the same laws or it should be made so.
I suspect this might end up as a slightly trickier scenario because when you get down to the details it’s hard at a technical level to make a distinction between a server log file and a tool like analytics which takes those same bits of data and mostly just organises and displays it in an intuitive way with charts and a nice UI.
Of course this isn’t yet a perfect banning of GA and Google might be able to work around it, but it’s something. And in fact, anonymized statistics would probably be OK (depending on the details of course).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't blame the lawmaker for the bad behaviour of people who are trying to bypass it... If you're on such website, you know that the website itself shouldn't be trusted.
the laws are teethless if they are not enforced, and playing hot potatoe with responsibilities like is the case with Max Schrems makes it all laughable. dont blame the lawmaker for participants bad behaviour? well, ok. allright. but i DO blame the responsible authorities for licking the misbehaving participants' boots
Fortunately organizations like NOYB (with Max Schrems) are doing exactly this: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-422-formal-gdpr-complaints-ner... Once there are a few high-profile cases with high fines to set a precedent, this hopefully changes the way companies handle cookie banners.
A great example of "surveillance too cheap to meter" https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3511661
Plus, as noted, Google will restrict what data is transmitted to third parties like IP address. That's a positive. Fear of regulators is more likely to keep Google in line than it is to some basement operation in Serbia.
I actually wonder if third party ad networks want to give up their power to Google in this way. It wouldn't surprise me if they don't.
As for the negative... I think the reality is it won't be as negative as people make it out to be. Why? Imagine if this is widely deployed. It creates a single call for all tracking so the adblockers just have to focus on that finding and blocking that call. The article claims this will be difficult. It will be harder but there'll be more incentive.
Next, a question: I don't know the ins and outs of GDPR and similar legislation well enough, but doesn't this put Google on the hook for data collection and transmission of that data to third party sites by virtue of them running these "proxies"?
Lastly, in general I don't really care if websites run A/B tests. They do this anyway and it's done serverside all the time as is. So that part of this isn't really a big deal.
Ad blocking is and will continue to be an arms race with advertisers. This feels like business as usual, honestly.