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CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

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Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#121

Post by chaps »

gruez wrote: post #114
chaps wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in ad-tech for a year before I left the tech industry as a whole. I've also done a fair bit of investigative journalism. Let me share a thing: Factual, a company that specializes in hyperlocal geofencing, uses geofencing much smaller than the self-regulation that their industry allows in their own rules. I learned this after a coworker quit because our company was allowing ad targeting to people using these…

>Please try to reconcile with what your industry has and continues to destroy. I don't see anything contradictory between your comment and the OP. Having an amoral CEO who condones breaking geotargeting self-regulation doesn't contradict OP's claim that it's hard to tie geotargeting data in bidstreams back to a particular person.

Sure, hard. But, um, lots of things are hard.

For example, it was very hard for me to identify myself in an anonymized public dataset of vehicle trips, but I did. It was also hard to FOIA for the documents showing them writing SQL to spot my trip.. but I did.

Hard doesn't mean impossible.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#122

Post by allthetime »

Zak wrote: post #83
derwiki wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, this has been my soap box for years. A very easy, effective, multi-layer setup: 1. Browser adblocker 2. Pi hole running locally 3. Pi hole at your home network router level And 4, not as easy but effective, a firewall like Little Snitch Edit: the other good news is your old data loses value quickly, so starting today is still very effective: you haven’t missed the boat yet!

This doesn't cover in-app adds on phones over mobile data, which is probably the main vector for the tracking discussed in the article. For that: 1. Adblocking via private DNS (e.g. https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls ) 2. Prefer websites over native apps wherever possible 3. Browser adblocker Hosts file adblocking is also possible on a phone where you have root.

Don't use apps with ads. I can't think of a single necessary one.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#123

Post by allthetime »

Cider9986 wrote: post #87
Zak wrote: post #66

I have never regretted my decision to aggressively block ads on every device I use, and to shun devices where I can't.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

What does "try to beat this" mean?

I just opened it in another browser and got another ID. Did I win?

For some reason using Microsoft Edge is deemed suspicious.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#124

Post by trinsic2 »

PostOnce wrote: post #105
Cider9986 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience. More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time .

Yeah I have been doing that for years now. I do most things the hard way. I forgot exactly how it started. I think it started when I decided I wanted to develop my own sense of discipline. I think right after I read the constructive living book by David K. Reynolds. The premise, as I understand it, is that depression is a direct result of not taking full responsibility and immediate action in your life.

Looking back, I realize that started me on the path of not doing things the easy way. It was really hard a first, but over time it got easier. Most people in my line of work don't take accurate notes of what has transpired, don't keep a proper history of business exchanges and don't have clear agreements and contracts in place that spell out what is expected. Once I started this process of improving my life, I realized the more I made the effort to keep detailed track of everything I do/did, my life and business started to improve. I think you are right, taking to the most convenient path in life is a sure way to bring about pain and suffering.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#125

Post by JumpCrisscross »

PostOnce wrote: post #105
Cider9986 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience. More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time .

> if convenience is the root of all evil

Convenience is how we describe efficiency when it applies to non-classically “productive” endeavors. (Analogous to how we rebrand efficiency as sustainability when it applies to material and energy inputs.)

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#126

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kelvinjps wrote: post #117
wat10000 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can increase your chances by crafting the laws differently, at least. A law that says the government can't ask for this stuff doesn't help very much. They'll ignore it when it suits them. A law that says it's illegal for private companies to hand it over would be better. When caught between a request from the government and a law that says they're not allowed to honor that request, there's a good chance they'll o…

With the recent anthropic incident, even if unlawful, the company will accept the government request, fearing retaliation.

> even if unlawful, the company will accept the government request

What demand did DoD make of Anthropic that the latter thought would put it in legal jeopardy?

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#127

Post by Aeglaecia »

some_furry wrote: post #91
andai wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this just identify you as "that one guy who blocks fingerprinting"? It's similar to when you use Linux or an obscure privacy-preserving browser. You've made yourself way more unique just by doing that. (I'm not sure how the math works out though, vs. actually running all that nasty tracking stuff.)

There are dozens of us! But, yeah, anti-fingerprinting is still a useful signal if less people do it. So more people should do it; especially if they're less likely to be targeted. "More haystack" makes their job harder.

i feel like this is the same as voting independant. it's the right idea in theory, but given the fact that 99% of people don't do it , righteousness is decreased. in this case very literally as having a unique fingerprint is entirely counter intuitive to the idea of privacy

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#128

Post by landgenoot »

noosphr wrote: post #111
PostOnce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience. More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time .

The root of all evil is that we don't have a functioning micro transaction network and we don't know how to build one. For the user there is no way to pay the 0.0000001c that it takes to load a web page, for the web master there is no way to get paid the $10,000 it takes to serve the users. So we settled on advertising which can somewhat cover those costs since each individual add is basically worthless but an add ca…

The lightning network supports transactions starting from 1 Satoshi.

One Satoshi is currently worth $0.000713.

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#129

Post by anjel »

noosphr wrote: post #111
PostOnce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience. More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time .

The root of all evil is that we don't have a functioning micro transaction network and we don't know how to build one. For the user there is no way to pay the 0.0000001c that it takes to load a web page, for the web master there is no way to get paid the $10,000 it takes to serve the users. So we settled on advertising which can somewhat cover those costs since each individual add is basically worthless but an add ca…

AI fixed that by calling it a token...

Re: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements

#130

Post by giobox »

Cider9986 wrote: post #87
Zak wrote: post #66

I have never regretted my decision to aggressively block ads on every device I use, and to shun devices where I can't.

I am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

The EFF's fingerprint test is nice in that it breaks down a lot of the bits of data used, and lets you know how you compare etc:

> https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

You quickly discover how difficult it really is to avoid a unique fingerprint.

Lots of folks in this thread are focusing on DNS and VPN to avoid detection, which of course can help, but a huge number of identifiable bits come from your browser's APIs:

User Agent

Screen Size and Color Depth

System Fonts

Hash of canvas fingerprint

Hash of WebGL fingerprint

WebGL Vendor & Renderer

Touch Support

AudioContext fingerprint

Hardware Concurrency

Device Memory

Platform

Language

Timezone

Timezone offset

Browser Plugin Details

etc etc

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