Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

chromium.woolyss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 902 posts

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

#591

Post by Chris2048 »

krageon wrote: post #402
ThalesX wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most often such comments come from eastern parts of Europe, where nationalistic movements have a nice resurgence in past few years. I wish people would stop attributing our attitude to nationalistic resurgences. I’m a globalist and think nationalism and regionalism should be relics of the past and I keep getting put in the same box as nationalists because I am Euro-realist. With this frame of mind I think the EU po…

> Euro-realist It's not realism to believe the EU can't exist within or facilitate your idealised frame of reference (assuming it makes sense and is something people should want), it's just negativity. > I wish people would stop attributing our attitude to nationalistic resurgences. Quite frankly nationalistic resurgence is the #1 indicator for "euro realism", so this is a very reasonable stance to take.

> nationalistic resurgence is the #1 indicator for "euro realism"

Is it though? All you did was express this opinion, you didn't prove anything. Also, multiple different indicators can correlate spuriously.

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

#592

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #523
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevertheless it could be strictly better: the new version gives the OPTION to share less data, whereas the old version does not really give you the option. If you include third party scripts, they can just send the information to third parties directly. Google could also be audited and would then have to prove that they really didn't share ay data, or whatever.

In the old way, site owners who did not want to send data to 3rd parties could just NOT insert the "send data to 3rd parties" code into their website Now they still have that option, but users have no technical means to determine whether this is happening

In the old days, servers could still share data with third parties, so in that sense, there never was any way to be sure.

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

#593

Post by ji23ii23jjj3 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#594

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #515
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, hence the issue with photographs of events of our children. I'm not convinced yet it is a net positive. For sure it increased senseless bureaucracy by a huge margin (not just the clicks on web sites, it creates more work in other places, too). The real players collect just as much data as before, but private people can't do most basic things anymore.

I'm not convinced yet that it isn't a net positive, given that a lot of what you described is illegal according to it, and said illegal behavior is being punished

"a lot of what I describe" - you mean big players collecting even more data? Not really illegal, you just have to get the users to consent somehow. Which most do anyway.

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

#595

Post by tick_tock_tick »

mtsr wrote: post #259
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…

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.

> Google Analytics has been recently ruled illegal in multiple European countries.

Just about everything hosted by a non EU company just got ruled illegal (in the EU that is).

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

#596

Post by zelphirkalt »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #133
ghoomketu wrote: post #23

Pretty sure a big ban hammer is coming for Google with all such shenanigans, especially in trigger happy places like Europe and India who don't like their citizens tracked and are happy to create legislative bans. So you may win the cat and mouse adblock game but what are you gonna do when countries start making it illegal to use GA? (1) (1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2022/02/10/frenc... ?

I can't wait for this to happen. Personally I think we just need to ban all targeted advertising based on viewer profiles, even session data such as IP and geo-location. This in turn should severely limit or destroy business models based on optimizing for engagement, as non-paying users are no longer profitable. It's going to cost a lot of people in ad-tech their jobs, but there is no shortage of demand for IT work,…

We also need to include hefty fines for handling data to Google and their ilk behind the back of users. It is required, but not sufficient to ban businesses like ad and spy business of Google.

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

#597

Post by pixeldetracking »

peer2pay wrote: post #433

I'm not too familiar with the space but this sounds very similar to the solution Cloudflare acquired a few months ago called 'Zaraz'. Looks like this really will be the next level of user tracking.

No post body was provided.

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

#598

Post by gorhill »

I read the original article back when it was published in November 2020[0]. This is what led me to introduce new static network filter options:

- strict1p, strict3p [1]

- header=, experimental, disabled by default [2]

I used Simo Ahava's blog as test case, and with these new options, I could craft a filter to block the Google Tag Manager script on Simo Ahava's blog. However due to the lack of more test cases, no more progress has been made about this since then.

Things that stood out to me when reading about all this:

Simo Ahava's refers to the CNAME approach as "vulnerable"[3]:

> This way you’ll be instructed to use A/AAAA DNS records rather than the vulnerable CNAME alias

"Vulnerable" to what? To uncloaking as I understand it, and by extension, "vulnerable" to users taking steps to protect their privacy.

Whether the very experimental solution in uBO ends up working or not, this case shows very well how Google Chrome's Manifest Version 3 (MV3) put a lid on innovation content-blocking wise: All the new filter options introduced above can't be implemented with declarativeNetRequest.

===

[0] https://www.pixeldetracking.com/fr/google-tag-manager-server...

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#...

[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#...

[3] https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/server-side-tagging-goog...

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

#599

Post by pixeldetracking »

gzer0 wrote: post #88

Increasingly, the only solution I see to this is Apple's Private Relay [1]. "When Private Relay is in use, the user’s device opens up a connection to the first internet relay (also known as the “ingress proxy”). As the user browses, their original IP address is visible to the first internet relay and to the network they are connected to. However, the website names requested by the user are encrypted and cannot be see…

Apple's Private Relay is great, but it won't help with server-side tracking (which is not based on IPs)

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

#600

Post by gbear605 »

ssl232 wrote: post #279
throwaway2037 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I feel the same, at least for a lot of things. Certainly, all externally facing websites should be designed and maintained by gov't staff. From time to time, HN features high quality UK gov't websites. In the last five years, the UK gov't has made dramatic strides on "digital gov't" initiatives that benefit regular citizens. As I understand, most of those sites are built and maintained by gov't employees. This r…

Brit here. On your last point, there is no such widespread attitude in the UK towards government. We are historically conservative, but not libertarian. Don't forget two of the most famous and loved British institutions are the BBC and the NHS. I'm not saying such attitudes don't exist, because they do, but it's not "all-prevailing" by any stretch.

The Conservatives want to privatise the BBC and the NHS though - abolishing the BBC licensing fee is a recent move, and steps to privatise the NHS have been repeatedly popular among politicians over the last decade.
Post reply on HN