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

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

#111

Post by Dah00n »

cheschire wrote: post #84
Dah00n wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as it is now Chrome (read: Google) can dictate how the web works and they do. If you use a Chromium based browser everything just works and happy people doesnt often complain or see the problems. So using something Chromium based makes you part of the problem. Apple isn't much better though so there aren't many options left...

What prevents forks of chromium from sharing amongst each other? I don't think google can gatekeep to the extent you seem to be implying. I'm pretty sure Brave and Opera and MS Edge can share changes they've made amongst each other without going through the original repository first.

Nothing stops them sharing but they aren't big enough (and in some cases not interested in) changing the web standards.

Think about it like in this oversimplified/stupid example: A "fix" or change is implemented in Chromium. In the long run (intended or otherwise) it turns out it moves pixels slightly differently than the way Firefox does it. If almost all your visitors use Chrome you have to design your site to be perfect in chrome and you might do so in Firefox. Now you have sites that look as intended in Chrome but maybe look as it should in Firefox. This make Firefox users use Chrome more.

Now Brave et. al. is part of the problem, helping drive the only real competition out of market (and killing their only way out should they some day need to change engine).

In extremely complex code this is very hard to not be a part of and a company like Brave is way too small to fork Chromium for long if at all.

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

#112

Post by d3nj4l »

esnard wrote: post #67
pluc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have fun with Twitter ads, block the advertiser whenever you see them. After two weeks or so you start to get really.. different stuff.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure if this is something I would prefer to current ads, or something I would want to avoid.

Back when I used to use Twitter is found it funny. I used to get cranks and hustlers with the occasional “Why is this random personal tweet promoted?” experience mixed in.

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

#113

Post by danShumway »

mavhc wrote: post #103
danShumway wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Doesn't matter, changes nothing.

It is a waste of time and energy to advocate for a privacy standard that can only ever be opt-in. Doesn't matter what Microsoft's motivations are, doesn't matter what they're doing elsewhere. A privacy standard that gets abandoned if it's ever defaulted to "on" for new users is worthless.

It's not Microsoft's fault that DNT went away, DNT was always going to go away the moment a sizable portion of the population started using it.

If Microsoft had asked users when starting up their computers whether they wanted to turn on DNT, and if a majority of users had turned it on, the advertising industry would still have had a meltdown and rejected the standard. We know this because that's exactly their reaction to iOS's changes, which are not turned on by default but force the user to make a deliberate choice when opening the app.

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

#114

Post by dmarti »

FLoC as a source of fingerprinting bits has been an issue in W3C discussions of the project.

https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/69

As a fingerprinting surface FLoC has similar properties to the Battery Status API -- not stable for the same user over long intervals, but can be used to help match pageviews from different domains that were close in time.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/firefox_remov...

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

#115

Post by danShumway »

______- 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…

This is a complete sidenote, but I don't understand why Firefox's Canvas controls don't affect WebGL.

Firefox has per-site settings for whether the canvas should be accessible which are very useful, but they don't have per-site settings for WebGL, it's either on or off for the entire profile. Which kind of defeats the point of Canvas blocking since (at least last time I checked) WebGL fingerprinting is possible regardless of whether Canvas can be read from.

I'm sure there's some technical reason, but it really seems like turning Canvas reads off for a site should also turn off WebGL.

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

#116

Post by lima »

______- 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 is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0]

To my understanding, Google (and many other sites) use WebGL and other fingerprinting techniques to distinguish real users from bots.

This does not mean they use it to track individual users (if that were even legal in Europe under GDPR).

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

#117

Post by tyingq »

I'm hoping for a sort of community revolt where most popular pieces of software that serve http, and most popular websites send back the "Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()" header as a default setting. I know Github did this, hoping others will follow.

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

#118

Post by pluc »

esnard wrote: post #67
pluc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have fun with Twitter ads, block the advertiser whenever you see them. After two weeks or so you start to get really.. different stuff.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure if this is something I would prefer to current ads, or something I would want to avoid.

Once you block out the "big advertisers", you get advertisements from smaller companies or even individuals.

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

#119

Post by pluc »

alias_neo wrote: post #69
pluc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have fun with Twitter ads, block the advertiser whenever you see them. After two weeks or so you start to get really.. different stuff.

When you say "block", do you mean Twitter block the account which is the Advertiser?

Yes, so that Twitter in their algorithm figures out that you can't consume this particular ad, it finds others. The more you block, the smaller the pool of advertisers is.

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

#120

Post by mavhc »

danShumway wrote: post #113
mavhc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Doesn't matter, changes nothing. It is a waste of time and energy to advocate for a privacy standard that can only ever be opt-in. Doesn't matter what Microsoft's motivations are, doesn't matter what they're doing elsewhere. A privacy standard that gets abandoned if it's ever defaulted to "on" for new users is worthless. It's not Microsoft's fault that DNT went away, DNT was always going to go away the moment a sizab…

Changes a few things, you don't "know" the result of something that never happened, you suspect.

Also changes the perception that Microsoft were doing it to attack Google.

Once it's a standard you'd get it enacted in law that companies have to respect the setting.

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