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The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

uk.businessinsider.com

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Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#31

Post by mahouse »

spindritf wrote: post #17

It's pretty crazy that browsers send referral in the first place. Getting rid of it, accidentally or not, is not a bug. I use refcontrol[1] to spoof the referral. I'm always visiting from the front page of the website even though I'm almost never visiting from the front page. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/

Exactly. On Chrome, I use Referer Control [1], which I guess does the same.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hn...

It's also very good to avoid those annoying image hostings that serve you a .html page with ads when they detect you click a .png file from another web page or those that just show you a image asking you not to hotlink content.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#32

Post by underlines »

For me as a Web Analytic Consultant this sounds so wrong:

We track campaigns through campaign-parameters but apps are a blind spot of course, that's nothing new. Relying on the referrer is stupid, most apps don't provide a referrer because they are Apps and not websites! Browsers provide a referrer if you are coming from another site. An App isn't a website, so there's no referrer.

Of course there's no referrer, it's a new browser window! Campaign-Parameters here would also not be very helpful. If the Visitor copies the link not from a guardian.com visit, but after coming to the story through a campaign-URL, he would copy the URL with the campaign parameters and paste it into the app. This would be even more wrong, but happens daily!

We Web Analysts should get used to it: People are becoming aware of privacy more than in the past and we can't always measure everything and everyone. Get over it!

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#33

Post by jacquesm »

cantlin wrote: post #14
randunel wrote: post #3

I built my personal extension which blocks all the traffic from Dan Pollock's list [1], then blocks all the traffic from major service providers (google analytics, etc) and social networks (fb, tw, google, etc) when not on their website. Referral and user agent headers removed, I haven't found the need to remove other headers. Currently working on preventing (and manually allowing) all xhr/script/image requests 2 sec…

Looks like that list hasn't been updated since our domain switch. If you really want to block our internal analytics (which are in practice fairly harmless) replace "hits.guardian.co.uk" with "hits.theguardian.com".

Nominated for the most classy comment of the month. That the product manager of The Guardian would take the time out from his (no doubt) busy day to help a user to block tracking is an amazing display of trust in that the user knows best what is good for them. Thank you.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#34

Post by danmaz74 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #20

This is another reason why a lot of links to certain pages have the referral or campaign information hardcoded into their URLs, which removes the need for a referral header. I guess if the Guardian really wants that information they can make a deal with app publishers or Reddit or whoever to add a header like that. But on the other hand, given how it was the Guardian that published all of the original Snowden article…

The funny thing is that there are scores of people here who are actively trying to get the Guardian out of business, because they regard anything related to advertising as evil. Will we be more or less free without the Guardian and similar independent sources of information?

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#35

Post by jacquesm »

viraptor wrote: post #26
randunel wrote: post #3

I built my personal extension which blocks all the traffic from Dan Pollock's list [1], then blocks all the traffic from major service providers (google analytics, etc) and social networks (fb, tw, google, etc) when not on their website. Referral and user agent headers removed, I haven't found the need to remove other headers. Currently working on preventing (and manually allowing) all xhr/script/image requests 2 sec…

Do you do anything about plugins sharing your fonts list? I found it to be the least known / most creepy way to identify a big number of users. Unfortunately i don't know of any extensions that would block that information.

Noscript will do that for you. To access the available fonts list you need to run a bit of js. So blocking javascript will take care of this.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#36

Post by mw6621 »

randunel wrote: post #3

I built my personal extension which blocks all the traffic from Dan Pollock's list [1], then blocks all the traffic from major service providers (google analytics, etc) and social networks (fb, tw, google, etc) when not on their website. Referral and user agent headers removed, I haven't found the need to remove other headers. Currently working on preventing (and manually allowing) all xhr/script/image requests 2 sec…

Very interesting. Please do consider putting the extension up somewhere!

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#37

Post by jacquesm »

danmaz74 wrote: post #34
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #20

This is another reason why a lot of links to certain pages have the referral or campaign information hardcoded into their URLs, which removes the need for a referral header. I guess if the Guardian really wants that information they can make a deal with app publishers or Reddit or whoever to add a header like that. But on the other hand, given how it was the Guardian that published all of the original Snowden article…

The funny thing is that there are scores of people here who are actively trying to get the Guardian out of business, because they regard anything related to advertising as evil. Will we be more or less free without the Guardian and similar independent sources of information?

You could of course simply pay for your online news(paper), the same way you used to pay for your paper based one.

Online newspaper is a bit strange, something like a 'plastic glass'.

I'm all for it, but most business models revolve around advertising somehow.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#38

Post by eksith »

randunel wrote: post #3

I built my personal extension which blocks all the traffic from Dan Pollock's list [1], then blocks all the traffic from major service providers (google analytics, etc) and social networks (fb, tw, google, etc) when not on their website. Referral and user agent headers removed, I haven't found the need to remove other headers. Currently working on preventing (and manually allowing) all xhr/script/image requests 2 sec…

This list is updated more frequently and is what I use : http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

There are a few things to take out to make certain services I like work (E.G. Hulu), so I usually try it in sections to see which services break and comment those.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#39

Post by blumkvist »

underlines wrote: post #32

For me as a Web Analytic Consultant this sounds so wrong: We track campaigns through campaign-parameters but apps are a blind spot of course, that's nothing new. Relying on the referrer is stupid, most apps don't provide a referrer because they are Apps and not websites! Browsers provide a referrer if you are coming from another site. An App isn't a website, so there's no referrer. Of course there's no referrer, it's…

For me as a Web Analytics Consultant this sounds very wrong:

A fellow Web Analytic Consultant doesn't know how to remove URL string parameters.

Oh wait! That makes me look better in front of clients. Nevermind, carry on.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#40

Post by pmoriarty »

jacquesm wrote: post #33
cantlin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like that list hasn't been updated since our domain switch. If you really want to block our internal analytics (which are in practice fairly harmless) replace "hits.guardian.co.uk" with "hits.theguardian.com".

Nominated for the most classy comment of the month. That the product manager of The Guardian would take the time out from his (no doubt) busy day to help a user to block tracking is an amazing display of trust in that the user knows best what is good for them. Thank you.

It's more like he knows that helping one single user like this isn't going to make a dent in the tracking they do on virtually all other users.

Now, if they voluntarily stopped tracking all or a significant portion of their users, I would be shocked.

Of course, that isn't going to happen.

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