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

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

#661

Post by timbit42 »

reaperducer wrote: post #110
bhauer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the short-term the strategy is this from the article: > Or ... block all the IP addresses of Google App Engine, at the risk of blocking many applications. having nothing to do with tracking. Anyone hosting legitimate apps in the Google ecosystsm is indirectly complicit in this and at least for my personal network, I have no concern with blocking Google App Engine holistically. Additionally, I think it's im…

I have no concern with blocking Google App Engine holistically Unfortunately, it seems that more and more government web sites rely on Google services to function. And there's no replacement for those.

Use two browsers. One where you don't block tracking and can access government and make purchases on shopping sites, and one tracking is blocked and JavaScript is turned off.

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

#662

Post by callmeal »

lewantmontreal wrote: post #113
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't browsers shifting to a per-domain cookie jar? While you can never prevent one specific site from tracking you, this still doesn't (directly) allow your activity on Site A to be linked to activity on Site B, does it? Of course, fingerprinting combined with IP addresses will ultimately allow something that comes very close to it, so the current state (a few hundred trackers per website, all ending up harmlessly…

This is what I’m interested in. Article itself did not mention cross site tracking. Every website having their own tracking subdomain makes third party cookies not work cross site even without browser changes.

The cross site tracking is done by a third party. From reading the docs, the way it works is, publisher sets a unique id, browsers send that unique id to the publishers domain, publisher forwards that (via the tag manager app engine) to the third party.

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

#663

Post by darebak »

martimarkov wrote: post #569
darebak wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is trying to undermine democracy, atleast in my country.

I feel this would be headline news if correct so do you want to elaborate or is it just a throw away comment with no backing?

It would not be headline news because bit doesn't benefit any big capital player.

Continuous support of Germany to autocrats is so widely known it even has a name, stabilocracy meaning that a country is ruled by an autocrat that is favourable to German and by extension EU business.

Most blatant support to that kind of leadership happens to be when the German PM and EU commissioners congratulated Serbia on its EU path often just days after some protest or antidemocratic measures done by the Serbian dictator. Or the support that Quinta gave to constitutional amendments which reinforced the control of the current regime over the judicial branch.

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

#664

Post by slx26 »

etempleton wrote: post #629
jacquesm wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is almost by definition not going to act ethically: their whole goal is to create a need where there isn't an organic one, and the KPIs by which marketing departments are run are proof positive of that. Nobody starts off with 'what would be the natural limit of our product sales', instead they start off with 'what is the total addressable market and how do we maximize our fraction of that' implying that if…

Most people only see 1-2% of what a marketing department does. The primary goal of a marketing department is to inform and present information in a clear and attractive manner. A good marketing department is also an advocate for what the consumer wants based on research and consumer feedback. Are there bad actors in marketing. Yes. A lot. Marketing agencies are full of them. Agencies, to generalize, only care about s…

Even when recognizing that there are a lot of bad actors in marketing, that's still an extremely over-optimistic perspective: at some point, tricking people becomes easier than improving the products, value propositions become muddier, and snake-oil starts to be used as the lubricant for business relationships. Only the most obvious offenders get run out of town, while most evolve and get to raise the new normal boiling point; as long as refining the snake-oil is cheaper than refining the actual products, the situation keeps getting worse.

Either the dynamics work in favor of the people, or they don't. That we continually mistake the comfort of our ships with the state of the sea is just the blessing and tragedy of our ignorance.

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

#665

Post by cobbzilla »

jeroenhd wrote: post #646

This kind of data collection abuse is why I think we need more addons like AdNauseam [1]. Unlike uBlock Origin, it's not available from the Chrome web store anymore, which is a good sign that Google hates these types of addons more than they hate simple blockers. Blocking A/AAAA domains with custom URLs to prevent tracking is almost impossible, so instead let's flood the trackers with useless, incorrect data that's n…

Can uBlock do payload inspection? It would be easy to block an upstream json POST that matches a certain structure.

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

#666

Post by itsoktocry »

ATsch wrote: post #643
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their whole goal is to create a need where there isn't an organic one This is reductionist. Was telling people about trains and cars creating a need where there wasn’t one? In a sense. But in another sense, it was broadcasting a better way of being. Marketing doesn’t have to be evil. Saying all marketing is evil is sort of a cop out for the people who do it badly.

> Was telling people about trains and cars creating a need where there wasn’t one? That's a great example actually, because the reason you can't get anywhere without a car these days is marketing campaigns by the automobile and oil industry. First by suggesting the newly necessary road safety standards and ridiculing people for being in the street without a car ("jaywalking") to the point that it was criminalized, th…

>because the reason you can't get anywhere without a car these days is marketing campaigns by the automobile and oil industry

We aren't all brainless automatons. Not everything is a giant conspiracy. Have you considered that there are people that actually like cars and find them convenient and useful? Cars and the highway system completely changed the course of commerce in this country. Sure, that has lead to some problems we're going to have to correct, but this idea that a bunch of moustache-twirling executives sat in a board room figuring out how to force cars on people is a bit much.

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

#667

Post by consumer451 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #646

This kind of data collection abuse is why I think we need more addons like AdNauseam [1]. Unlike uBlock Origin, it's not available from the Chrome web store anymore, which is a good sign that Google hates these types of addons more than they hate simple blockers. Blocking A/AAAA domains with custom URLs to prevent tracking is almost impossible, so instead let's flood the trackers with useless, incorrect data that's n…

I am very interested in this, thanks for sharing.

Adding another party into my web browsing is always a tough pill for me to swallow. I am also a noob at reading trust signaling. What are some of the reasons that I should trust this dev and their processes?

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

#668

Post by itsoktocry »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #654
ATsch wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was telling people about trains and cars creating a need where there wasn’t one? That's a great example actually, because the reason you can't get anywhere without a car these days is marketing campaigns by the automobile and oil industry. First by suggesting the newly necessary road safety standards and ridiculing people for being in the street without a car ("jaywalking") to the point that it was criminalized, th…

Not to speak of a promised sense of freedom you could only ever possibly obtain by driving around in the right kind of car and smoking the right brand of cigarettes.

>a promised sense of freedom you could only ever possibly obtain by driving around in the right kind of car

You do realize that having the ability to hop in your car and drive wherever you want to go without having to report to anyone provides an incredible amount of freedom, right?

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

#669

Post by 1shooner »

onion2k wrote: post #337
gigel82 wrote: 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…

The article is from 2020, and I don't think I've ever seen a site using this approach yet. It is an egregious attempt to circumvent the Same Origin security policy in browsers that developers and privacy advocates should rightly be angry at, but it doesn't seem to have caught on. That's something to be thankful for.

>I don't think I've ever seen a site using this approach yet.

What have you been looking for? It seems like this would be hard to observe.

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