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Opt Out From Online Behavioral Advertising By Participating Companies
- jharohit 11y agoJust finished scanning - seems like 126 ad companies where tracking me for targetted ads! When I tried opting out, only 76 acknowledged. Just very very troubling..
- smoyer 11y agoI'm on a new machine and did limited browsing before installing uBlock and PrivacyBadger. Only 5 companies were tracking my browser (I didn't try opting out yet). Edit - 3 of the 5 companies accepted my opt-out request.
- Larrikin 11y agoI think the 126 is all companies participating in the program, not necessarily the ones that are actively tracking your browser. The second tab contains the companies tracking you. Luckily I only had 9 and was able to opt-out of all of them.
- jharohit 11y agotechnically yeah - but a lot of amongst the 126 were showing a status of "No status available" (or something along those lines). 126 seems like quite a low number for it to be the TOTAL number of participating companies - I could be wrong though..
- tjohns 11y agoAre you running an ad blocker? It seems to interfere with the status checks, since it blocks all traffic to the networks in question. Try temporarily disabling your ad blocker and trying again.
- tomlong 11y agoGives me some confidence in uBlock & Privacy Badger... The first time I ran it there was 1 site tracking me (adbrain).. I adjusted my PB settings accordingly and got 0. It's a useful site for calibrating those tools! http://i.imgur.com/hdReODM.png http://i.imgur.com/hdReODM.png
- salzig 11y agoyou may also consider to switch on: Settings -> Show advanced settings -> Privacy -> Content settings -> Block third-party cookies and site data.
- branchless 11y agoany downsides to this?
- adamwulf 11y agoI've been blocking 3rd party cookies for over a year and haven't noticed any downsides or broken websites.
- kuschku 11y agoGoogle+ Notifications don’t work on any Google sites except for plus.google.com (so you can’t view your notifications on other sites). But that’s it.
- branchless 11y agoThanks guys. Enabled!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Someone1234 11y agoBe careful, some sites/services don't function correctly without that set.
- dsr_ 11y agoPrivoxy raised a warning, not letting me go there without clicking through. So I did. uBlock origin prevented the site from loading anything interesting, and Self-Destructing Cookies means it isn't leaving anything behind. I think I'm fine, but how can I know for sure?
- jharohit 11y agoBased on other comments, seems like uBlock does the trick somewhat. But to be sure - just uninstall both and then try again?
- ashmud 11y agoHTTPS Everywhere (Firefox) is blocking this. I get the "third party cookies blocked" message. When I disabled HTTPS Everywhere, it worked.
- jharohit 11y agoand how many did you get?
- ashmud 11y agoI had nine. On another computer, I had eight (less Yahoo). Both computers have uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and the built-in Firefox tracking protection.
- ntaylor 11y agoSame for Chrome.
- joshschreuder 11y agoNot sure about Firefox, but in Chrome you can just disable the About Ads (partial) rule: https://i.imgur.com/qtHHtij.png https://i.imgur.com/qtHHtij.png
- occamrazor 11y agoNote that the opt-out option provided only opts out of tracking-based advertising, not of browser tracking. To avoid tracking by ad companies use uBlock, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, etc.
- peteretep 11y agoBetween Privacy Badger, Self-Destructing Cookies, and AdBlock Pro (and a browser cache which wipes itself on close), a grand total of zero trackers. Woo woo!
- sudojudo 11y agoThe page won't even load for me, that's good, right? Paranoid mode FTW! Turning off NoScript and Random Agent Spoofer doesn't help. Still running: uBlock, HTTPS Everywhere, Disconnect, and BetterPrivacy.
- CM30 11y agoThree sites were tracking me apparently, and that's with uBlock Origin active. But I opted out of them regardless.
- eli 11y agoKind of a misleading headline. Look through the list of third-party cookies in your browser if you want to see who is tracking you. This is a list of ad companies who have agreed to offer an option not to track you.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoI'd imagine users of cookie trackers might also try to track you through other means.
- mike_hock 11y agoAnd how do I know that they actually don't?
- chupy 11y agoThey have to abide to this policy otherwise they probably get kicked out of the advertising organisations. http://www.aboutads.info/enforcement http://www.aboutads.info/enforcement - You can report any misbehaviour here. This does not mean that you will not see ads from them it means that they should delete all profiling information that they have about you and serve you just shitty regular ads.
- dang 11y agoYes, the submitted title ("Find out which ad companies are tracking you") broke the HN guidelines, which ask people to keep original titles unless they are misleading or linkbait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pessimizer 11y agoI think you can estimate how many companies are tracking you by noticing how many things that you had to disable to get this page to work.
- k2enemy 11y agoAlso fun -- see what Yahoo thinks your interest are: https://aim.yahoo.com/aim/us/en/optout/ https://aim.yahoo.com/aim/us/en/optout/
- komali2 11y ago'Travel > Destinations > Middle East' So I can assume Yahoo isn't the one watching this particular bit of my internet traffic...
- 0xffff2 11y agoIs there any legitimate use for third-party cookies (which is all this seems to analyze)? I disabled third-party cookies years ago and I have never noticed any negative side effects at all.
- vitd 11y agoI'm not sure, but I have had web sites I need to use like my bank (a large well-known multi-national bank) complain when I browse in private mode. It seems to work anyway, but it tells me several times that things might not work unless I turn off private mode. I don't know if I'm lucky, or if they're just lying to get me to accept trackers.
- smt88 11y agoPrivate mode allows cookies, but deletes them when the session ends.
- JumpCrisscross 11y agoI thought I disabled ads in Safari by selecting, under cookies and website data, "allow from current website only". But new cookies from domains I've never visited keep spawning. What am I doing wrong?
- putlake 11y agoIt's because unbeknownst to you, the sites you visit are requesting javascript or a tracking pixel from these other domains.
- proactivesvcs 11y agoI've had third-party cookies disabled for ~five years and noticed no problems.
- surferbayarea 11y agoPeople don't care. It is funny that smart people don't care about tech and ad companies violating their privacy by collecting data and profiting from it. But they have an issue with the government doing it to protect them. Perhaps has something to do with the fact that silicon valley's success is based on the advertising business model and violation of people's privacy.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoFor me, it has a lot to do with the fact that I have more to fear from the government collecting a lot of information about me than I do from having ad companies collecting information about me.
- vitd 11y agoI don't know about you, but I just assume that the government is a client of the ad companies and is buying data about me from them.
- Gustomaximus 11y agoI'm the same. I think a big reason is trust as you mention. The other is consequence, and significance of consequence. If a company abuses a peoples collected data they are likely just spamming them or something similar to sell me some product, and they can expect repercussions. If a government is abusing data there is likely nefarious activities happening challenging a countries democracy and little consequence to be easily had. Very different end results and motivations.
- deanCommie 11y agoOr perhaps it's because people don't trust that the government is interested in protecting them. If a private company uses the information it has on you maliciously at least you have some recourse - a competitor, or the justice system. When the powers in charge decide to use your data against you because they don't like your political stances, who is going to protect you?
- 11y ago
- hoopsho 11y agoOur project can help out here too... With Metiix Blockade (free as in beer) we can see every request that is blocked, what url caused the blocked request as well as protect each device in the network from tracking, ads, and malware related websites.
- Animats 11y agoFacebook just broke their site if you have Facebook's social media plugins blocked. Unclear if this is an anti-Ghostery measure or they just screwed up. Their code uses "require", which is not standard JavaScript, and whatever loads "require" needs a social media plugin.
- deepsun 11y ago0 sites with http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (it blocks requests at OS level with /etc/hosts)