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Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

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Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#31

Post by Wicher »

tech-no-logical wrote: post #4

and to all site owners moaning about people using adblock : this is why we can't have nice things. as long as policies like this exist, I'll block anything remotely able to track me.

If it's the tracking you'd like to avoid, don't use ad blockers!

They're the wrong tool for the job. They're for blocking ads. So they'll block ads that are not leaking your info (for your use case, a false positive) and will not (not necessarily) block other means by which you're being tracked (for your use case, a false negative).

Use something like RequestPolicy (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...) or PrivacyBadger (https://www.eff.org/privacybadger) instead. That way, you're not blocking ads per sé — though a side effect of using RequestPolicy is that you won't see much ads — you're blocking the leakage of information to third parties instead.

Using blanket ad blocking sends the wrong signal to site owners, and creates little incentive to do the 'right thing' — it lets the "bad apples" (which I imagine to be something like 99% of the online ad businesses) spoil it for the one percent that does value your privacy, with no way for anyone to improve. Using ad blocking for privacy reasons is not completely effective (false negatives) and worse, it's punishing individuals for the behaviour of the flock.

=========================================================

Edit: Found the perfect example of the false-positive and false-negative I'm talking about above: http://www.gentoo.org . Harmless ads — just images inside html anchors, loaded from the domain in the site URL. Not leaking anything. The ads help an organization I support.

So what does AdblockPlus do (default settings)? It blocks them. What does RequestPolicy do? It lets them through.

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#32

Post by teamhappy »

mp3geek wrote: post #29
teamhappy wrote: post #6

I take it Ghostery takes care of it as well. Does anybody know?

Its a bit old, but Adblock Plus lists rank pretty well for privacy; http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6730 also another comparson; https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-does-HTT...

The block lists are great. I'm using them in a different plugin though.

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#33

Post by zvrba »

daemonk wrote: post #17

Someone should make a plugin that actively sends facebook false tracking information along with your own.

I was seriously considering to make a browser plugin which would scrape pages for Google Analytics unique IDs, make a local database of them and randomly mix them up. Like this:

  0. [page visited]
  1. Does the page contain GA tracking ID?
    no: do nothing
    yes: add it to the database and replace it with another randomly chosen ID from the database

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#35

Post by BillFranklin »

zvrba wrote: post #33
daemonk wrote: post #17

Someone should make a plugin that actively sends facebook false tracking information along with your own.

I was seriously considering to make a browser plugin which would scrape pages for Google Analytics unique IDs, make a local database of them and randomly mix them up. Like this: 0. [page visited] 1. Does the page contain GA tracking ID? no: do nothing yes: add it to the database and replace it with another randomly chosen ID from the database

Would pay for that.

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#36

Post by tech-no-logical »

Wicher wrote: post #31
tech-no-logical wrote: post #4

and to all site owners moaning about people using adblock : this is why we can't have nice things. as long as policies like this exist, I'll block anything remotely able to track me.

If it's the tracking you'd like to avoid, don't use ad blockers! They're the wrong tool for the job. They're for blocking ads. So they'll block ads that are not leaking your info (for your use case, a false positive) and will not (not necessarily) block other means by which you're being tracked (for your use case, a false negative). Use something like RequestPolicy ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/req…

I tried requestpolicy, I found it too cumbersome to use. with adblock edge, I subscribe to 2 lists and I'm done. I'd try again if they adopt such a feature.

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#38

Post by mp3geek »

Wicher wrote: post #31
tech-no-logical wrote: post #4

and to all site owners moaning about people using adblock : this is why we can't have nice things. as long as policies like this exist, I'll block anything remotely able to track me.

If it's the tracking you'd like to avoid, don't use ad blockers! They're the wrong tool for the job. They're for blocking ads. So they'll block ads that are not leaking your info (for your use case, a false positive) and will not (not necessarily) block other means by which you're being tracked (for your use case, a false negative). Use something like RequestPolicy ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/req…

So don't use Adblock Plus because it works too well? And if theres false positives with either the Adblock or Tracking lists it comes with whitelists get around certain website bugs.

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#39

Post by r0h1n »

tech-no-logical wrote: post #26
r0h1n wrote: post #14

AdBlock Plus once blocked Google ads, till Google decided to pay them [0] to "whitelist" their ads by default. The cynical part of me sees this as a precursor for AdBlock to sign a deal with Facebook and let their ads/tracking through too, for a price of course. [0] http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-go...

just use adblock edge : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

Thanks, I already do

Re: Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

#40

Post by spindritf »

The company opted to ignore the Do Not Track setting on Web browsers ... other Internet behemoths, including Google and Yahoo, have publicly confirmed that they also ignore Do Not Track

Am I the only one bothered by the silliness of "Do Not Track"? Or even worse, the EU cookie law?

You have a browser that leaks all kinds of info[1] about itself, tells everyone where you came from (sends referral), takes cookies from strangers like an untrained dog, making you uniquely identifiable and instead of fixing that, you ask everyone on the web to please disregard that info your browser just volunteered. How is that not completely backwards?

AdBlock, RefControl, and Disconnect, or their equivalents should be built into modern browsers. And maybe do something about the user agent, fonts, etc, too?

Don't educate users. Fix it.

[1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/

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