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Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

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Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#181

Post by oarsinsync »

arm wrote: post #174
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're not allowed to send unsolicited emails. Sorry, this is completely false information that is easily verifiable by looking at the wikipedia page for the can spam act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003#Sending_b... > But when sending unsolicited commercial emails, it must be stated that the email is an advertisement or a marketing solicitation.

Sorry, this is completely correct information if you don’t assume that the US in the only country in the world. For example, Canada’s Bill C-28¹ explicitly prohibits it. ―――――― ¹ — http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/canada-s-new-anti-spam-law-ap...

Looking at the full context of the quote is useful.

> This is really pushing the boundaries of the CAN-SPAM act. You're not allowed to send unsolicited emails.

The USA is not the only country in the world, but the CAN-SPAM act totally permits unsolicited emails, which is the context of this thread.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#182

Post by dredmorbius »

I've mentioned putting the Winhelp2002 hosts file on my dd-wrt router a few times. I just checked to see if I need to add any specific entries.

    root@router:/tmp# grep criteo hosts0
    0.0.0.0     cas.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     dis.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     dis.eu.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     dis.ny.us.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     dis.sv.us.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     dis.us.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     ld2.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     rta.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     rtax.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     sapatoru.widget.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     sslwidget.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     static.criteo.net
    0.0.0.0     static.eu.criteo.net
    0.0.0.0     widget.criteo.com
    0.0.0.0     www.criteo.com
Apparently not.

Deets: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/v9l7zvlyynvl1pskbwssmq

https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Ad_blocking

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#183

Post by malchow »

Please. There is no core privacy premise of the internet. The core premise of the internet is one protocol to deliver meshed knowledge to any computer. And the commercial possibilities of the internet are what have underwritten the growth of the network.

Reaction like this one make me think: entitled.

But they also make me think: unrealistic. How much should hypertargeted ads really bother us? Call me when they are using my bank account and medical records to show me ads. Not my browsing history, over whose exposure I have complete control, and which doesn't really expose very much about me or my family.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#184

Post by benjamincburns »

malchow wrote: post #183

Please. There is no core privacy premise of the internet. The core premise of the internet is one protocol to deliver meshed knowledge to any computer. And the commercial possibilities of the internet are what have underwritten the growth of the network. Reaction like this one make me think: entitled. But they also make me think: unrealistic. How much should hypertargeted ads really bother us? Call me when they are u…

There is no core privacy promise _built in_ to the core of the internet in the same way that there is nothing in the laws of physics which prevent murder. We have laws and cultural norms for this sort of thing, and it's not at all entitled or unrealistic to suggest that those tools be used to curtail a rather parasitic situation such as this.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#185

Post by zer0gravity »

tombrossman wrote: post #81
Karunamon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the best way to avoid being fingerprinted by advertisers is to block JavaScript by default. Leaving aside the sheer amount of stuff this will break, you're serving to identify yourself in another way, but perhaps not to an advertiser. Given the average website, the number of people using a real web browser (i.e. not bots, curl, wget, etc) who don't run JS is going to be absolutely miniscule. It's kind of like turning…

This topic comes up a lot on HN and my response is always the same. Try NoScript again. Give it a day or two and whitelist the sites you use a lot and trust. You will have a stunningly faster browsing experience and the number of sites that don't work will be surprisingly small. We have passed a tipping point where all the annoying bullshit that depends on JavaScript to function far outnumbers the random websites tha…

Just installed NoScript. Thank you!

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#186

Post by kbart »

akg_67 wrote: post #151
wpietri wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Any vendor doing this to me goes on a perma-ban list. If they don't respect me before the sale, I'd have no reason to think they'd respect me after.

Why do you think the proactive customer outreach is "not respecting you"? I view it as providing high level of customer service, before and after sales, in B2B space. It is no different than Amazon displaying related products that you might be interested in or Netflix showing you a queue based on your past viewings, in consumer space. For example, if a visitor's company produces widgets and as a vendor we have previo…

"It is no different than Amazon displaying related products that you might be interested in or Netflix showing you a queue based on your past viewings, in consumer space."

Is is very different imho. Looking up contact details of site's visitors by IP is much like following a person back home and try to sell him something just because he stopped by your shop's window briefly. That's just creepy, I would never deal with a company that does that.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#187

Post by ACow_Adonis »

xg15 wrote: post #132
Karunamon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the best way to avoid being fingerprinted by advertisers is to block JavaScript by default. Leaving aside the sheer amount of stuff this will break, you're serving to identify yourself in another way, but perhaps not to an advertiser. Given the average website, the number of people using a real web browser (i.e. not bots, curl, wget, etc) who don't run JS is going to be absolutely miniscule. It's kind of like turning…

Can't say much about DNT, but I think turning off javascript absolutely makes sense. If you turn it off, they can put you into the "disabled javascript" pool of users. So what? But if you keep it on, they can query half a dozen APIs and get a much more detailed configuration of your browser. Which lets them put you into a much smaller pool and identify you more confidently.

And what's more, the more of us that turn off the script, the more anonymizing the "disabled javascript" bucket becomes, as well as the increasing the pressure on web developers to stop the js bloat. Win win I say.

I've been surfing forever with noscript, only white listing those domains I need.

Exploding cookies (the add on, not the terrorist device), and an ad blocker, and the internet is quite usable.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#188

Post by mike-cardwell »

jamiesonbecker wrote: post #23
sp332 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really pushing the boundaries of the CAN-SPAM act. You're not allowed to send unsolicited emails. You shouldn't be allowed to pretend that visiting a site is a solicitation. Edit: I misunderstood the mechanism of collecting the addresses. This isn't skirting "unsolicited mail", but it is circumventing the ban on harvested email addresses.

> You're not allowed to send unsolicited emails. Actually, you ARE allowed to send unsolicited email, even commercial (UCE). It has to be clearly labeled, contain the postal address of the sender, and contain unsubscribe links. Also, CAN-SPAM only applies to senders in the U.S. (unfortunately). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003#Applicabi...

"unfortunately" ? Thank God we don't have the CAN-SPAM act in the UK. I'd be receiving unsolicited spam from all sorts of UK businesses if we did.

I don't care if a spam email has an unsubscribe link or the sender is clearly labelled. Once it's received and seen, the damage is done.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#189

Post by amelius »

yeknap wrote: post #178
zer0gravity wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no core privacy premise of the internet, and certainly not one that everybody used it signed up for. Sure there isn't. The internet is just a jungle where predatory animals can hunt you down if you go in their teritory. They say we've exited from the jungle once, but apparently the jungle is still in us. Besides ad blockers, we need more plugins to help us mark these animals and keep us away from them. A n…

At this point a plugin probably isn't enough. We need a better browser that gets back to the document viewing roots. Something better than NoScript that has a rough idea of the types of transforms a domain's JS performs so that it can serve me the "page" w/out running suspicious code. Although I suspect this would just start a new style arms race of obfuscation similar to adblock, etc.

> Although I suspect this would just start a new style arms race of obfuscation similar to adblock, etc.

We could use AI to detect and remove ads, perhaps combined with collaborative filtering.

Re: Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam

#190

Post by onion2k »

xg15 wrote: post #129
trjordan wrote: post #15

> This transaction breaks a core promise using the internet: just because I visit a website doesn’t mean I consent to getting spam from it. No it doesn't. There is no core privacy premise of the internet, and certainly not one that everybody used it signed up for. I'm not condoning this behavior, but we're in territory that we don't have prior art for. It used to be totally fine for one shopkeeper to mention to anoth…

The web exists for 20+ years now. How exactly is visiting a website unknown waters?

It's quite similar to the me going to the store to buy a carton of milk. I have practically no knowledge of what's involved in the complex chain of interactions that gets the milk out of the cow and into my shopping basket. I don't need to know, and so long as the store always has milk I don't really care. If someone out there were to invent a way to track the exact milk I buy I wouldn't instantly know how it works or understand it. I don't think I'd like the idea though.

The details of what actually happens when you visit a website are known to a tiny number of highly technical people (a few tens of millions globally). Most people have no idea what sort of data can be gathered and used to track you across the internet. People don't understand that Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc all use the same third parties to share information and build immense profiles about every aspect of who they are and what they do, nor do they understand the way statistical analyse can be used to glean even more insight from that information.

Nothing like the internet has really existed before. Although browsers have existed for 25 years most people didn't use one before about 15 years ago, and most people weren't tracked in the way they are now until 10 years ago. This is new ground. We can't expect non-technical people to grok this stuff quickly.

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