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Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#11

Post by gruez »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #6
hellofunk wrote: post #3

It's unclear to me how these "trackers" work? How do they track you, is it cookies, or what?

In practice, User-Agent strings (which are just HTTP headers) have been shown to be pretty effective at uniquely identifying and tracking most people. So even disabling JavaScript and Cookies only goes so far.

Source? Because the only information contained in user-agent strings in modern browsers are browser version (realistically limited to vendor since browsers auto-update) and operating system version. So basically all you're going to get is (Chrome/Firefox/Edge/Internet Explorer/Safari on Windows/Linux/Mac), which isn't much.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#13

Post by amelius »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #4
hellofunk wrote: post #3

It's unclear to me how these "trackers" work? How do they track you, is it cookies, or what?

There are a number of ways. Cookies are one, but you can also collect other kinds of data from a web browser to uniquely identify a user across multiple sessions. Generally speaking, if you can run JavaScript, you can track the user. This is done by all advertisers and most little widgets like Facebook or Disqus comments, like and tweet buttons, etc.

> This is done by all advertisers and most little widgets like Facebook or Disqus comments, like and tweet buttons, etc.

Why isn't this illegal already?

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#14

Post by throwaway2048 »

bauerd wrote: post #5
hellofunk wrote: post #3

It's unclear to me how these "trackers" work? How do they track you, is it cookies, or what?

Probably most (if not all) fingerprinting sources are showcased by fingerprint.js: https://github.com/Valve/fingerprintjs2

It is essentially impossible to enumerate all the ways browsers leak fingerprintable information.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#17

Post by ceejayoz »

binthere wrote: post #16

Later they demoed they can track your interests in what you've read on the web to show you personalized news on their news app and keyboard autocompletion.

That'd be first-party tracking. If I'm using an Apple app I expect Apple to know it, but I don't necessarily expect Mixpanel or Google Analytics or Segment.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#18

Post by draw_down »

binthere wrote: post #16

Later they demoed they can track your interests in what you've read on the web to show you personalized news on their news app and keyboard autocompletion.

They're also very careful to specify that this computation takes place locally on the device.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#19

Post by andreyf »

binthere wrote: post #16

Later they demoed they can track your interests in what you've read on the web to show you personalized news on their news app and keyboard autocompletion.

Which would be super creepy if they were a company which is beholden to advertisers for their revenue. But alas, they are not.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#20

Post by ceejayoz »

josefresco wrote: post #12

"the web behaves as it always did" Uhhh, not really. Even if the behavior is unwanted, the web will not "behave" the same - otherwise the feature does nothing.

They pretty clearly mean that the web behaves the same from the user's perspective.
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