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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

#101

Post by Artemis2 »

code4tee wrote: post #70

Sounds like this is more in line with what they did with ApplePay vs traditional credit cards--I.e. They give you randomized IDs each time so the other party can't track you from transaction to transaction. Adds can still appear but they won't know who you are, so it's a direct shot at Google and others looking to give people "targeted" adds based on user behavior. I agree it's an issue that needs addressed. Just bec…

Note regarding Apple Pay: due to the way credit card networks implement network tokenization, online merchants can actually track you across multiple transactions. You get a per-device ID, of which you can have at most 10 per card (for Visa). Ideally, unique payment tokens would be derived from these IDs for each transaction. In reality, the ID is sent along with a random cryptogram for each transaction, leaving tracking possible (on the same device only). This is because these tokens have to be in the same format as card numbers, and the ranges available to issuers are rather limited.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#102

Post by tinus_hn »

tyingq wrote: post #74
tinus_hn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to block Google Analytics to make it more private. You just need to make the user appear to a new user to every site. So Google may lose data because then they can't track you all over the web, but the websites don't because they still see you as one user.

Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I assume Google does all sorts of fingerprinting (documented and not) via GA. Why else would it be free if it didn't provide a big upside for Google?

Why do they need fingerprinting? They can just give you an identifier and combine it with your login on the Google sites to connect it to your identity.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#103

Post by Spivak »

ksk wrote: post #93
icelancer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....so? Site owners are not guaranteed this access; their script runs on the client computer. I say this as someone who does a lot of analytical research and re-targeting and would be hurt if this was rolled out on a larger scale; I just don't think I have a right to the data.

Well, if don't care about things that prevent you from doing your job, then what exactly is the point of working in that field?

Imagine you were a police officer with this mentality.

"As someone who investigates lots of crimes, it's totally fine if someone invokes the fifth amendment, I don't have the right to compel them to answer."

"I mean if you don't care about something prevents you from doing your job, why even join the force?"

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#104

Post by gruez »

wil421 wrote: post #21
gruez wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A quick Wikipedia search turns up more fields [1]. Although some of these fields are not 100% accurate due to historical reasons (I'm looking at you IE). I'd bet there are a couple other data points they gather via JS to finger print. Example: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/7B405 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

I compared 2 chrome versions and it seems that most of the version numbers there are static.

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2979.0 Safari/537.36
    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.10 Safari/537.36
As for iOS 10 it's pretty sparse as well.

    Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/602.1.50 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14A403 Safari/602.1
It's slightly worse than windows because it probably discloses your device type, but there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands of users for each iphone variant.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#105

Post by miles »

ch4ck wrote: post #47
tannhaeuser wrote: post #26

Thumbs up for Apple distinguishing themselves by their pro-privacy stance, as opposed to MS, who don't have anything to win by Win10's excessive "telemetry" IMHO.

Internet Explorer has tracking protection since IE9.

They are completely different beasts. Internet Explorer merely offers the option to enable[1] "Do Not Track", which websites and advertisers are free to ignore[2], while Safari's new ad tracker blocker "uses machine learning to identify trackers, segregate the cross-site scripting data, put it away so now your privacy — your browsing history — is your own"[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Internet_Explorer...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Effectiveness

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-adds-a-tracker-block...

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#106

Post by cpeterso »

tpush wrote: post #99
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to my IE right now to activate it, I have to say this is a janky solution. It opens the Add-ons window, where you can see you have no Tracking Protection Lists. Then you can click to browse the add-on gallery for them, and then you have to scroll down and pick a list from a set of options. While this is flexible, open, and that's all good, the lack of a common sense default and a multi-step setup process is pro…

"it's gonna make a huge dent in Google Analytics' numbers". Very unlikely, since almost nobody uses desktop Safari.

This feature will surely show up in iOS Safari, which would have a big impact.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#107

Post by ksk »

Spivak wrote: post #103
ksk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if don't care about things that prevent you from doing your job, then what exactly is the point of working in that field?

Imagine you were a police officer with this mentality. "As someone who investigates lots of crimes, it's totally fine if someone invokes the fifth amendment, I don't have the right to compel them to answer." "I mean if you don't care about something prevents you from doing your job, why even join the force?"

I don't have to "imagine" anything. Let me invite you to consider the context of my original comment before coming up with ridiculous comparisons.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#108

Post by epistasis »

ksk wrote: post #93
icelancer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....so? Site owners are not guaranteed this access; their script runs on the client computer. I say this as someone who does a lot of analytical research and re-targeting and would be hurt if this was rolled out on a larger scale; I just don't think I have a right to the data.

Well, if don't care about things that prevent you from doing your job, then what exactly is the point of working in that field?

Kind of presuming the wrong thing there. There's still work to be done, right? Just because something would make the job easier does not mean it should be done, ethics come first.

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#109

Post by Darthy »

code4tee wrote: post #70

Sounds like this is more in line with what they did with ApplePay vs traditional credit cards--I.e. They give you randomized IDs each time so the other party can't track you from transaction to transaction. Adds can still appear but they won't know who you are, so it's a direct shot at Google and others looking to give people "targeted" adds based on user behavior. I agree it's an issue that needs addressed. Just bec…

That's actually not how ApplePay works. You get a new randomized credit card number, but only once. Shops can still track you by checking for the number. You can check that yourself by looking at receipts when you pay with ApplePay - each receipt features the same numbers (most receipt only show the last 4 digits, but they are always the same when you pay with ApplePay).

Re: Apple adds a tracker blocker to desktop Safari

#110

Post by ksk »

epistasis wrote: post #108
ksk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if don't care about things that prevent you from doing your job, then what exactly is the point of working in that field?

Kind of presuming the wrong thing there. There's still work to be done, right? Just because something would make the job easier does not mean it should be done, ethics come first.

Um, they were already tracking people, and now they can't (presumably). If ethics were a priority why were they working that job in the first place?
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