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

Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

yro.slashdot.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 144 posts

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#111

Post by elehack »

eric-hu wrote: post #55
JoshTriplett wrote: post #5

I don't actually think this policy will have the desired effect of improving privacy and similar. While I do think advertisers and analytics abuse third-party cookies, they also have a dozen other things they can switch to that the browser provides fewer facilities to control: http://samy.pl/evercookie/ Meanwhile, any legitimate services that rely on third-party cookies would have little choice but to switch to whate…

What are legitimate uses of third party cookies? Not trying to be snarky or sarcastic, I'm just unaware.

Logging in to services like Disqus, for one thing.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#112

Post by clobber »

chewxy wrote: post #6

I don't really like this. I work in the advertising industry and retargeting is honestly one of the most exciting things to come out. Sure there are ways of cookieless retargeting, but it is a hassle. I mean, everyone's heard of Samy's Evercookie right? Then there are TCP stack signatures, and other companies like a few European DSPs that use cookieless tracking to track a person (IMO it's quite easy to use a GET pix…

Sorry, this is a good thing and it makes the web better.

Advertisers have been abusing users for years and it just keeps getting worse. Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies) are only one example. Facebook's attempt at the Beacon project was another.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#113

Post by cpeterso »

Kylekramer wrote: post #68
cpeterso wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari already uses this cookie policy.

While I don't agree that this is indictive of Firefox's demise, saying "fourth place browser does it" is hardly a compelling counterpoint.

Safari on iOS is an important browser, in terms of market share.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#114

Post by cpeterso »

chewxy wrote: post #6

I don't really like this. I work in the advertising industry and retargeting is honestly one of the most exciting things to come out. Sure there are ways of cookieless retargeting, but it is a hassle. I mean, everyone's heard of Samy's Evercookie right? Then there are TCP stack signatures, and other companies like a few European DSPs that use cookieless tracking to track a person (IMO it's quite easy to use a GET pix…

Firefox is blocking all third-party cookies, just ones from domains the user has never visited. So third-party widgets like Disqus and Facebook should still work. I suspect this move will penalize smaller ad networks and consolidate power to big players, like Google and Facebook, that are visited by users.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#115

Post by cpeterso »

zxtang wrote: post #62
melvinram wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather see ads for things that are completely irrelevant? Relevance requires data. Edit: I do believe the user should have more control over what companies are allowed to retarget with an easy opt out mechanism implemented by every ad network as well as a way to limit the frequency. I've experience companies going WAY overboard on their retargeting and it feels stalker-ish.

Many ad networks[1] do already provide an opt out mechanism. You look for a blue icon[2] in the corner of the ad, which if you click it should take you to an opt out page. I dug a bit further, and also found this: http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ which purports to allow you to opt out from any or all of the participating companies from that page. [1]: http://www.aboutads.info/participating [2]: http://www.aboutads.i…

There is a Firefox addon called "Beef Taco" that inserts 450+ known opt-out cookies into Firefox's cookie jar:

https://github.com/jmhobbs/beef-taco

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#116

Post by amastilovic »

ryanhuff wrote: post #104
amastilovic wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lowers their income by forcing them to succumb to non-targeted advertising which is less effective and brings less money. I'd love to see your ideas of a free and secure web without marketing money flowing into content provider websites.

Striving to maximize revenue is great. However, I don't see this particular issue as black and white as you present it. This will certainly make some websites less profitable, but I doubt that it would bring an end to the free web. In fact, aren't there are other ways to do retargeting? Given Google's relationship with Mozilla, if this move would negatively impact Google, i would be very surprised to see it happen.

You are correct, it won't affect the omnipresent Google because virtually everyone has visited their domain at some point. This will target alternatives to Google, leaving us with one company to do effective advertising.

How is this in the interests of the end user is beyond me, really.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#117

Post by linc01n »

notatoad wrote: post #101
jacquesm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I can't stand retargeting, if there is one turn-off I have when visiting websites it is being hounded from site to site by an ad. That signals to me to never ever buy that product. That it is 'exciting' to those in the advertising industry is a signal all by itself. Once a while ago I googled for a bit around the time I was buying a car. For weeks afterwards I got hounded by car ads for some brand. Needles…

My biggest annoyance with retargeting is also buying a car. I don't remember seeing any car ads leading up to my purchase, but ever since buying the car (over a year ago now) my browser is littered with Ford Focus ads. It's not going to do any good to show me ads for a Focus, i already bought one. It's just a waste of your ad buy to show me more ads. Retargeting seems to be, at this point, one of those technologies t…

For my case, I always see newrelic retarget ad. I need to check newrelic everyday for work. And after that every time I watch a youtube video it shows me a newrelic ad. I am already a Pro Annual user, I can't upgrade my plan anymore. They should not retarget current user.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#118

Post by taf2 »

taf2 wrote: post #92
cremnob wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of the workarounds?

etags, png image, something about tcp stack tracking... there are work arounds and there will be more workarounds... blocking cookies is stupid... they are part of the web

here's a new one css ever cookie, shit it out in an hour after reading this post: https://gist.github.com/taf2/5022672

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#120

Post by taf2 »

chewxy wrote: post #6

I don't really like this. I work in the advertising industry and retargeting is honestly one of the most exciting things to come out. Sure there are ways of cookieless retargeting, but it is a hassle. I mean, everyone's heard of Samy's Evercookie right? Then there are TCP stack signatures, and other companies like a few European DSPs that use cookieless tracking to track a person (IMO it's quite easy to use a GET pix…

do you have more details about how to use "TCP stack signatures"... is that like using SYN Cookies? Keeping track of the opening packet request and associating it back to a user via a real cookie maybe?
Post reply on HN