Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data • Hacker News Board

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#101

Post by ______- » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #97

But this can't be, people assured me that FLoC was an improvement to privacy, and that it would provide an alternative to persistent identifiers and profiles, and that it would help end the arms race on fingerprinting. You mean to tell me that FLoC will be used for fingerprinting anyway, and it changes nothing about advertiser's strategies and tracking techniques, and they won't self-regulate, and that it doesn't wor…

> End the arms race on fingerprinting

Google is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0] and this practice will continue unless some sort of political action is taken to make fingerprinting illegal. WebGL is not the only heuristic used to reliably determine it's a specific device accessing a site, but a whole slew of techniques can be used to reliably determine it is 'you' who is on a site (you can even detect if a browser is running in a virtual machine, among many other techniques to fingerprint).

To mitigate this, I do most of my browsing with JS disabled by default, and if I really need JS turned on (for a site I trust like my bank), then I temporarily turn it on for that specific site. Also you can just disable WebGL in Firefox in about:config but keep in mind, there are many other techniques Google and `ADTech` in general can use to fingerprint you.

[0] https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#102

Post by pdimitar » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

gorhill wrote: post #100

pdimitar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super interesting, thank you! I immediately disabled it and will monitor if that improves my page loading speeds. EDIT: pay no attention to the text below, I have misread the linked documentation. uBO isn't using external proxy for any network requests. Not sure how much -- or at all -- you're involved with uBO. Your name does ring a bell though so I'd like to remark to you that making the users' browser use proxy is…

> making the users' browser use proxy is a step too far uBO does not do this, and nowhere is there any suggestion that uBO does this. Users configure their own network settings, and it was found that in some cases when the browser is configured to go through a proxy (through either OS or browser settings), uBO's CNAME-uncloaking feature, which requires a call to the `dns.resolve()` API[1], would cause undue delay to…

Then I have misread. My apologies. Editing the comment above so as not to mislead readers.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#103

Post by mavhc » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #94

mavhc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Not Track failed because a) the worst sites would just ignore it and b) Microsoft tried to use it as a weapon against Google by setting it as default

Obligatory "Microsoft Did Nothing Wrong" post: Too busy to do a long post in detail, but short version is that advertiser's acceptance of DNT was entirely dependent on people not using it. If Microsoft had left it as opt-in but the majority of consumers had turned it on, we would have seen the same result. You can see the same principle to explain the response to iOS's privacy changes, which are not opt-in or opt-out…

Microsoft has 57 screens about turning tracking on/off for Microsoft things when you install Windows, they're not against asking the user, except in that one case...

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#104

Post by jffry » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

______- wrote: post #101

danShumway wrote: post #97

But this can't be, people assured me that FLoC was an improvement to privacy, and that it would provide an alternative to persistent identifiers and profiles, and that it would help end the arms race on fingerprinting. You mean to tell me that FLoC will be used for fingerprinting anyway, and it changes nothing about advertiser's strategies and tracking techniques, and they won't self-regulate, and that it doesn't wor…

> End the arms race on fingerprinting Google is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0] and this practice will continue unless some sort of political action is taken to make fingerprinting illegal. WebGL is not the only heuristic used to reliably determine it's a specific device accessing a site, but a whole slew of techniques can be used to reliably determine it is 'you' who is on a site (you can even detect if a…

Even the fact that WebGL is disabled contributes some entropy that can be used to identify you.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#105

Post by pmurt7 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #40

pmurt7 wrote: post #27

We need to collectively switch to Firefox and Brave.

Correction: they never injected ads, but they do remove ads and replace them with "attention tokens", which is an opt-out system for publishers. See also https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-popular-brows... . In short, please look into the questionable aspects of Brave. Brave is perhaps the most ethically challenged browser out there. Hopefully they have stopped doing this, but they were injecting their ow…

Soon publishers will be allowed to run Brave ads on their website (and earn money), but users will be able to disable these ads anytime. So Brave is building a web experience where users can choose to enable ads or not (and if they do they will earn crypto).

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#106

Post by twox2 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

Am I missing something? Wasn't this the pitch for floc from day one?

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#107

Post by approxim8ion » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

______- wrote: post #101

danShumway wrote: post #97

But this can't be, people assured me that FLoC was an improvement to privacy, and that it would provide an alternative to persistent identifiers and profiles, and that it would help end the arms race on fingerprinting. You mean to tell me that FLoC will be used for fingerprinting anyway, and it changes nothing about advertiser's strategies and tracking techniques, and they won't self-regulate, and that it doesn't wor…

> End the arms race on fingerprinting Google is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0] and this practice will continue unless some sort of political action is taken to make fingerprinting illegal. WebGL is not the only heuristic used to reliably determine it's a specific device accessing a site, but a whole slew of techniques can be used to reliably determine it is 'you' who is on a site (you can even detect if a…

Google turn every result on their search result page into a tracking URL if you have JS disabled. The solution is to allow JavaScript and install the Google Search Link Fix add-on, until they break that too I guess. Or use another search engine.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#108

Post by acheron » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

randomperson_24 wrote: post #5

Why is it that all anti-Google posts just approach the first place on HN in such a short amount of time.

Because HN is full of people who care about the Internet and Google has been working to destroy the Internet for the past 15 years?

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#109

Post by soared » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

______- wrote: post #101

danShumway wrote: post #97

But this can't be, people assured me that FLoC was an improvement to privacy, and that it would provide an alternative to persistent identifiers and profiles, and that it would help end the arms race on fingerprinting. You mean to tell me that FLoC will be used for fingerprinting anyway, and it changes nothing about advertiser's strategies and tracking techniques, and they won't self-regulate, and that it doesn't wor…

> End the arms race on fingerprinting Google is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0] and this practice will continue unless some sort of political action is taken to make fingerprinting illegal. WebGL is not the only heuristic used to reliably determine it's a specific device accessing a site, but a whole slew of techniques can be used to reliably determine it is 'you' who is on a site (you can even detect if a…

Fingerprinting on your own sites is pointless since only third party cookies are being removed. First party cookies still work like normal.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#110

Post by ______- » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

jffry wrote: post #104

______- wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> End the arms race on fingerprinting Google is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0] and this practice will continue unless some sort of political action is taken to make fingerprinting illegal. WebGL is not the only heuristic used to reliably determine it's a specific device accessing a site, but a whole slew of techniques can be used to reliably determine it is 'you' who is on a site (you can even detect if a…

Even the fact that WebGL is disabled contributes some entropy that can be used to identify you.

You can't detect if WebGL's turned on/off if JS is turned off. You need JS turned on to detect WebGL's presence