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Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

noiszy.com

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Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#141

Post by noiszytech »

slifty wrote: post #135

Hello all! Recent creator of a similar tool that has been getting a lot of buzz, I am here to throw some constructive thoughts out there! These ideas are useless from a technical level (for all the reasons that have been mentioned already.) Where they are useful is at a social level. People are energized and ready to fight. Many of them didn't know about this issue. Many of them didn't know that there are things they…

Hey there - I like your project. Sounds like our tools are complementary, and you make an interesting point about the browser-vs-plugin based approach. I do think it's worthwhile to specifically browse news sites - I believe they're the worst "filter bubble" offenders right now, and this can help break that. The more efforts there are in this space, the better. Thanks for sharing your project!

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#142

Post by mrkgnao »

literallycancer wrote: post #124
always_good wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This website reminds me of the KenM post where he suggests that he's getting back at Papa Johns by not tipping the pizza delivery driver. Generating click fraud on your favorite web comic's website or other small websites you may be visiting is pretty sad. Adsense bans for life.

I don't read webcomics, and somehow I don't think people like gwern who write long-form content do it for the ad revenue. And even if there are ads on the website, if they respect the DNT header, AdNauseam won't auto-click them. (I'm not sure what the tipping anecdote is supposed to mean, but I don't understand why US customers put up with tipping either, the business is responsible for it's operating budget, and the…

> webcomics

https://www.reddit.com/r/KenM/

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#143

Post by noiszytech »

jerf wrote: post #36
danbruc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It most likely is because it is incredible hard to create realistic fake traffic. The moment you start using such a tool is probably very easy to detect due to a sudden jump in traffic. Then you can use prior data to figure out what you were actually doing - sites you visit, times you are active times, how you switch between sites, how long you stay on sites, and so on. Randomly following links will show very differe…

If I were writing this, I would try to get it into as many hands as possible, and do some sort of backfeeding of data to generate "real" profiles of user activities, then send back down suitably randomized profiles of other real users that you use for some period of time. It's important to conceive of this as an arms race, and I think one of the underappreciated things about arms races is that if you successfully ant…

This is an awesome (and thorough) response and a great idea. I totally agree about the arms race and how AI + crowdsourced data could be applied to create much more realistic fake viewing patterns. I'm super-glad that this conversation is taking place.

But, wouldn't collecting viewing habits and then using AI to define (and emulate) real-looking behavior immediately put the developer(s) in that moral grey area that so many algorithms occupy? Technically it could be done, and it would be fascinating to work on, but we'd have to start with a huge browsing dataset (creepy) and then process it to figure out the patterns (exactly what this tool is trying to subvert), and then feed that back as output from within the user's browser (probably feeding back indistinguishable-but-AI-driven data and creating a loop). It's a murky space to wade into, and one that needs a lot more conversation.

Instead I decided to just keep it simple. The first page is chosen randomly from a list of (user-approved) sites. A link on that page is chosen randomly from the list of links that open in the same window and point to the same domain, and that's clicked. That's repeated a somewhat-random number of times, usually about 2-7 times, before a new site is chosen from the user-approved list, and the process starts over.

Check out Cathy O'Neil's definition of "Weapons of Math Destruction" (good overview of her book here: http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-d...) - I'd love to hear your thoughts on that framework for determining the morality of algorithms.

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#144

Post by grandalf »

I had an idea a few years ago to make a chrome plugin that would send encrypted emails (containing a randomly generated message) to all sorts of Muslim country email addresses, helping to reduce the fruitfulness of encryption circumvention and surveillance.

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#145

Post by Veratyr »

noiszytech wrote: post #112
watty wrote: post #51

It's kind of funny their website includes TypeKit, SquareSpace, and Google Tag Manager scripts - all of which can (and probably are) tracking various things. They may not be connected to "you", may be anonymized, may be unique number representing you.

Hi - Noiszy creator here. You're right about the scripts - we're using GTM and Google Analytics. I think it's 100% legit for sites (like mine) to want to know how much traffic they're getting - this to me is a good use of data. I work in the analytics field and actually I love data - I just don't like AI using data in creepy ways. The thing is, there is a big moral grey area between "count visits" and "creepy targeti…

> I think it's 100% legit for sites (like mine) to want to know how much traffic they're getting - this to me is a good use of data.

As others have pointed out, it's not about you getting the data, it's about the Analytics services you're using getting the data.

I'll also point out that if all you want is to know how much traffic you're getting, you can do it with far more ease by simply looking at your server logs. Why server-side analytics aren't used more I have no idea.

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#146

Post by Johnny555 »

I'm not sure I understand the point of this -- marketers will just discard this random data that doesn't match a human access pattern.

If this anonymized my tracking data for sites I visited, that would be useful, but sending a bunch of random hits doesn't seem like it will keep anyone from tracking my activity which is what I want to shield.

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#147

Post by j_s »

_wmd wrote: post #98
_lqaf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite what you're describing, but the venerable Squid cache can do distributed caching. Something, at least, to play with with your nerdy friends.

It needs to happen in-browser because of the modern prevalence of SSL. I think only Firefox has APIs powerful enough to intercept stuff on this level, and even those APIs are obsolete, so I think it really needs to be integrated straight into a browser fork. Chrome / Firefox WebExtensions have request interception, but I'm not sure it's powerful enough to do this kind of stuff (Also, the mere fact such a scheme would…

Not while SSLKeyLogFile is still around. I keep wondering how long it will last, but it's been a while already.

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#148

Post by bonnaroo »

noiszytech wrote: post #141
slifty wrote: post #135

Hello all! Recent creator of a similar tool that has been getting a lot of buzz, I am here to throw some constructive thoughts out there! These ideas are useless from a technical level (for all the reasons that have been mentioned already.) Where they are useful is at a social level. People are energized and ready to fight. Many of them didn't know about this issue. Many of them didn't know that there are things they…

Hey there - I like your project. Sounds like our tools are complementary, and you make an interesting point about the browser-vs-plugin based approach. I do think it's worthwhile to specifically browse news sites - I believe they're the worst "filter bubble" offenders right now, and this can help break that. The more efforts there are in this space, the better. Thanks for sharing your project!

I'm just going to leave this right here. https://github.com/Xodarap/Paranoid-Browsing

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#149

Post by XzetaU8 »

literallycancer wrote: post #67
gingerbread-man wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has actually blocked similar "noise generation" apps from the Chrome Store in the past. As I recall, there were a few extensions out there that would 'click' on every ad displayed. Obviously that would have created serious problems for Google, so they nixed it.

https://adnauseam.io/ I wasn't convinced it was very useful and thought it would only take some easy heuristics to filter out when I first saw it, but if Google removed it from the store, it must have been a pain to deal with. Maybe I'll even end up using it.

"TrackMeNot" from the same ppl who made AdNauseam but instead of clicking on ads it creates random queries on various search engines

https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#150

Post by luhn »

ballenf wrote: post #138
liotier wrote: post #26

Distributed spidering for a community-fed search engine index would provide comparable end-user benefits while being considerably more socially useful.

Or a local meetup group for subscribers to a compatible ISP (all DOCSIS 3.x cable modems, e.g.) where you bring in your cable modems throw them in a pile and then take home a random one. Do it monthly. Combine that with a script that takes all non-sensitive browser history and cookies and does the same -- swap out with a random stranger. Neither is practical and the former would require (at least for my provider) tha…

How would the former affect web trackers?
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