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Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

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231–240 of 902 posts

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#231

Forgive me if this is ignorant. Wouldn't an adblock simply need to inject an impersonation payload into the page, so the report would send incorrect attribution to the proxy server?

In case of Google it could be (initially) quite simple. Randomly change um-Parameters, gclid-Param and the like. This would at least make marketing tracking more "interesting".

Years ago there was an extension that did that for GA and Adobe Analytics at least.

But that would only be an arms race. We (analysts and marketing agencies) would obfuscate the params we use and switch that in the server side container.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#232
post #197

So if the script comes from the owners site instead of Google. And all the rest requests are proxied via the owners site. Would this not result in people forking a browser that looks at http requests before they are packaged and issued to remove tracking data or block the request?

And how do you differentiate between a request that is sending over tracking data and a request that is sending over data required to fetch the page you requested?

It would seem easier to identify data patterns than script content. After all, tracking is only useful if the data is consistent.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#233
post #25

God damn... this is it, this is the end-game. There's no way to fight this unless you customize and maintain blocking scripts for each individual website. Yes, websites could always have done this, but the REST (CDN-bypassing) requests' cost and the manual maintenance for the telemetry endpoints and storage was an impediment that Google just gives them a drop-in solution for :( I think Google is happy to eat some of…

I think the solution will be for ad blockers to invest in neural nets to detect the graph of the code flow for known variants of the script. The software that detects plagiarism will be a good start.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#234
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s Private Relay blocks this type of cross site tracking. Given this tracking is all server side, third party cookies across sites aren’t possible using this mechanism, and private relay cycles through your IP addresses frequently and uses common IPs across multiple users. Regarding your other point, unless Google execs want to be thrown in jail / sued, they can’t use things like first party cookies for their be…

How is private relay different from a vpn? A lot of fingerprinting scripts also can track you despite vpn.

[deleted]

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#235
post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

> privacy rights given to us by law (eg in the EU)

> As a EU citizen, i hope that our ineffectual administration at least tries to fight this somehow. Of course, there is little hope.

GDPR is thanks to the EU and I wouldn’t say it has no effect.

It seems like you’re contradicting yourself with these two paragraphs.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#236
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just use Firefox containers?

I use Firefox containers but my Firefox is locked down too tight for online shopping so I use a different browser for making purchases.

firefox still has profiles, so you could use a profile that's not locked down instead. Although you'd probably wanna use a differnt theme on both to distinguish them.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Slavery was OK in the US for a long while. If things hadn't been done to get this changed in the US, it would still be seen as an OK thing to do, and in reality no higher power or law of nature would stop that, even in $current_year - evidenced by how worldwide modern slavery/forced labor is still going strong[0]. My point is that there is no correct moral compass, no general rule as to what behavior is good or…

Are you asserting that it is your current opinion that slavery was morally OK in the US, because it was morally accepted at the time? (Warning: this is a trap question, do not answer yes, the only socially accepted answer is no)

Not the guy you're responding to, but this trap question seemed like you either misunderstood their comment or are unintentionally putting words in their mouth.

Their comment explicitly subscribes to a form of ethical relativism [1], which argues that there is no universal concept of "morally right" or "morally wrong", and that morals are determined solely by the society judging them at that time.

[1] >Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies.

>https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision...

It is not a particularly helpful take in an ethical debate (which this whole privacy thread is) outside of making a populist argument ("if everything thinks X is morally acceptable, then it is; who are you to say it's not?").

That said, I'm not sure I'd want to make the loaded comparison of equating "taking notes of who does what in your house" to slavery. One of these things is very clearly significantly worse than the other.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#238
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also makes it harder for any alternative - you can’t use two different systems to proxy the same content at the same time, and you can’t expect one company to not “protect user privacy” by filtering competitors. Honestly the only reason this is even an option for google is because a bunch of web admins said “I want to know who is browsing my site, and who cares if that lets google spy on every person who uses my…

This was modded down, but commented on favorably. Am I wrong about this giving Google a backdoor into every web site that uses it?

Yes, you misunderstand it. Google isn't getting any more information / power than they previously did. What server side tagging does it separates the creation of tags outside of a user's browsers and into a server that is a part of your infrastructure. You can host this tagging server on Google Cloud, but you can also self host it if you choose to.

To restate what happens, a website's users send events to a first party tagging server and then that tagging server can communicate with 3rd parties.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#240
post #81
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it so strange that if you or I were to do these kinds of things to an individual it would be considered creepy cyber stalking but when companies do it they are rewarded?

Do what? Record who came in and out of your house?

Actual it would be more like a company recording what (physical) mail you read, when you read it, where you were when you read it, how long you read it, where you looked at on the paper, etc. You request data, they send it to you.

For example, ad blocking is more akin to paying someone to cut advertisements out of a magazine before you read it.

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