I think it's clear that almost all of the dark traffic is simply https sites. It's no necessarily apps, it can just be gmail...
Someone really should make it a default to pass the referrer even for https.
The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#42I saw this illustration yesterday and it perfectly illustrates why I won't ever be a "normal" visitor to spying websites. Dear journalists, please consider your integrity to a better society. If you can't publish your thoughts without selling your readers to tracking and other evil, then I won't be crying after you. :\
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#43I 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…
I really wonder how this 10KLines is handled by the network subsystem. Is it compiled into a big regexp ? or another form of compacted runnable logic ? or at which point does it slow local name lookup.
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#44They could just randomly survey a sample of the dark traffic user to find out where they're coming from.
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#45I 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".
I admire the fact that you offer this kind of info :-) thanks mate, always admired the Guardian for his articles, authors & general stance towards privacy.
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And if there wasn't a glut of great free content on the internet, it might actually be worth paying for.
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#47I 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…
Sounds interesting - care to share?
[deleted]
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#48That's what you get from forcing your app on facebook. P.S. remember this: http://rational.pdimension.net/2011/10/11/do-not-use-the-gua... This is backlash, enjoy it.
I will never forget it, and I still don't click on links to the guardian.
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#49"not knowing that data hurts the Guardian's ability to serve those readers relevant content."
Actually one of the main reasons why I use various anonymizers is that I don't want relevant content for the same reason I don't want to see Facebooks's "top stories" -- most often it turns out to be totally irrelevant, clickbait or complete bullshit. Leave me the choice to what's interesting for me and what I want to see.
Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And if there wasn't a glut of great free content on the internet, it might actually be worth paying for.
Where free means "supported by advertising"?