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Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites
- slazaro 10y agoAll the more reason to block their widgets on other websites, using something like Ghostery or Disconnect.
- Freak_NL 10y agoAnother alternative is EFF's PrivacyBadger: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger All this in addition to an ad-blocker (such as uBlock Origin) of course.
- ymse 10y agoI prefer uMatrix[0] (by the uBlock author) which gives absolute control over third (and first) party requests. I don't even subscribe to the built-in Adblock filter because of my default-deny rule. It also negates the need for Privacy Badger and similar. See the screenshots for how it works (similar to, but more granular than, uBlock advanced mode). https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Very-bare-walkthrough-for-first-time-users https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Very-bare-walkthroug... https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Examples-of-useful-rulesets https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Examples-of-useful-r... 0: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix
- bballer 10y agoAlso in combination with NoScript your life will be much better.
- eknkc 10y agoSurprised they weren't doing that already. Facebook has javascript injected on a lot of sites, always assumed that they'd collect a shit ton of data whether you are a user or not. Also, all ad blockers block google analytics like tracking services but social plugins are generally opt in. I guess they should be blocked by default too.
- sdoering 10y agoI know a lot of AdBlocking Tools/List that do not block Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics by default. Do you know the ones that do?
- flavor8 10y agoGhostery, uBlock Origin. Running both in combination seems to get most bugs.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bdz 10y agouBlock Origin + EFF Privacy Badger is a really powerful combo and works fine
- tommeader 10y agoIsn't that overkill? EFF Privacy Badger states that it's a one-extension solution rather than having ghostery, adblock + others: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger (2nd FAQ) I've never tried Privacy Badger myself, what's your reasoning for having both? Is it not quite as all-encompassing as it claims?
- sp332 10y agoIt's an anti-tracking extension, not an adblocker. uBlock Origin lets you sign up to custom lists and make custom rules which can include cosmetic filters. These are helpful for removing things from view even if they get loaded by your browser, which is darn convenient even though it's useless for preventing tracking.
- EGreg 10y agoWith fingerprinting, what's the point of all this? Browsers and Internet commections now have enough discoverable stuff via HTTP and JS to identify users uniquely enough that in 99% of cases the user's session can really get a unique id! Across publishers! Without third party cookies!!
- nxzero 10y agoSurprised Facebook didn't by AddThis when it was up for sell; instead Oracle did.
- userbinator 10y agowhile non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe. Or you can just block all requests to their domains. I have *.facebook.com and a few others blocked.
- sdoering 10y agowc -l /etc/hosts == 11846 About 90% are blocked sites. The rest is local (privat and business) dev configuration.
- mrweasel 10y agoAre you sure it's not more than 90%, or do you actually have almost 1200 dev configuration in your hosts file?
- pcora 10y agoserious question, doesn't having such a big hosts file affects performance somehow?
- gruez 10y agoThe time it takes to scan a 10k line file (even if it's not cached in memory) is much smaller than a round trip to your DNS server.
- pfschell 10y ago$ wc -l /etc/HOSTS 220572 /etc/HOSTS Not only doesn't it have any negative performance impact, it makes most websites 10x faster. (And no, there's no dead weight in there. Every single one of those is still resolvable as of a month ago.)
- ape4 10y agoDoes /etc/hosts support *.facebook.com ?
- sdoering 10y ago
- theoapps 10y agoZero ethics
- Bedon292 10y agoBegins? I though they were already tracking everyone who saw a Facebook badge anywhere on the internet already. Or were they just trying to track the users who were not logged in at the time?
- AimHere 10y agoThey WERE tracking you already. Now they're throwing ads at you.
- lucb1e 10y agoThey have been doing this since forever and if I remember correctly, the EU told them to stop. I don't remember if they really did stop (at least, I'm not sure if they say they did, nobody knows what they really did of course). /me opens article Oh, it's about showing ads to non-users, not about tracking. The article doesn't even claim they didn't track non-users before. Clickbait?
- necessity 10y agoDidn't they also do this before? I remember installing Fanboy's Social Annoyances List in my ad blocker years ago and never seeing those like buttons and social media crap again.
- dang 10y ago> Oh, it's about showing ads to non-users, not about tracking. The article doesn't even claim they didn't track non-users before. Clickbait? Yes, and it's largely copied from another article (note the long quote followed by "tells the Journal"), so we changed the URL to that one instead. (Submitted URL was http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad-network-non-users-cookies-plug-ins http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad-netwo...). Submitters: HN prefers original sources. If a blog post reports on another article, please submit that article instead. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- astazangasta 10y agoAgain, I deplore the colossal waste of human effort and talent that is going into building a sophisticated panopticon for the noble purpose of better targeted advertising. For fuck's sake, what a waste of the best minds of our generation.
- jsemrau 10y agoWell said! A company that has literally all the resources in the world comes up with better advertising and engagement through memes and addictive games. I guess that is what we deserve.
- mrweasel 10y agoI hate when people say that people who waste time on Facebook just need to show some willpower. As you say it's some of the best minds working on it. Pitching the willpower of a 15 year old against the combined minds of the Facebook engineers tasked with keeping them on the site, of cause the 15 year old (or 50 year old for that matter) will lose. And all that, so some company can blast us with adverts.
- dingaling 10y ago> And all that, so some company can blast us with adverts. It is sad that they chose to build themselves upon tracking / data-mining / advertising. Even if they charged a nominal fee[0] of $1 per month they'd have nearly as much incoming revenue and much lower overheads without having to develop and maintain all that creepy stuff. They wouldn't have to play psychological warfare, they could just focus on providing a good product. 'Facebook is free and always will be'. But at the cost of being regarded as malevolent and, therefore, ripe for disruption. [0] I apologise if this is not nominal to a significant proportion of the user-base.
- deprave 10y agoOf course this comment was downvoted. I really want to know what's the opposing view to this statement. Who's going to step forward and say why they think this is wrong? At the very least, make an argument like "the AI needed to trick a teenager into spending half their awake time on Facebook can also be used to solve actual problems."
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dzek69 10y agoIt did years ago :) When i didn't had account they already know my name, mail, telephone number, because some idiots gave them their mails login & passwords, allowing FB to read all contacts. I wasn't on Facebook, yet in the "hey, join FB" message they listed 6 of "people I know that are already of Facebook". So imagine how much data they got about me: 1) No account on FB 2) But FB tracked me with their cookies on almost every page, because almost every page has some FB widget (fanpage box, like buttons etc) 3) They know "some-random-guy-9348239849" likes to browse pages A, B, C, D, which means he likes AA, AB, BA, BB, BC, CA, DA activities 4) Then people start giving away "their" data about me. A lot of them did, so FB could connect who I know, and their connections with each other. 5) So FB got "my-name-PERSONAL_DATA", not associated with the data from point 3. 6) I got that message 7) If I'd click the welcoming link, then I wouldn't even need to register - FB then could connect that "some-random-guy" data with "my-name" data. This probably goes even deeper, but we just don't know that. Facebook with that message told me way too much about how much they know about unregistered users, I bet they don't do this anymore :)
- csydas 10y agoYep, what you're describing is what I believe is called "Shadow Profiles", and they've been unapologetically doing it for years. Very likely, even if you have all the privacy extensions and jsblockers installed on your computer, or even if you go full RMS and only wget once a day to get your daily content and email, odds are Facebook has a full profile on you because of the people in your life who leak the information about you. Your folks filling out a form on Facebook saying that they have X children, your friends sharing their contact list with LinkedIn/Google/Facebook and you're on it, your workplace profile being crawled, and so on. Unless you go full on hermit, there's really no way to not be part of Facebook either actively as a user or passively as a shadow profile. Exfiltrating this data, or even so much as seeing the entirety of it also appears to not be possible to see what bits of your information have been gathered, to know who has access to it, to know what it's being used for, or even to deny them the ability to make profit on this information. It's incredibly frustrating, as if any individual citizen were to do this sort of reconnaissance and data gathering on another citizen, it'd be called stalking, and people would have legal means to redress. But the fact that even those who have not agreed to the Facebook TOS are still profiled and sold and used for profit without the aforementioned persons' consent seems very wrong.
- DyslexicAtheist 10y agothis does the trick: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts.git https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts.git
- deadowl 10y agoThere are entire companies built on tracking non-users around the internet.
- Jemm 10y ago127.0.0.1 facebook.com
- Artemis2 10y agoGhostery and the EFF's Privacy Badger are your friends. You will get better blocking as these maintain lists with all the alternate domains they use. https://www.ghostery.com/try-us/download-browser-extension/ https://www.ghostery.com/try-us/download-browser-extension/ https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
- sp332 10y agoUnless you're running a server on localhost, you'll have to wait for the connection to time out. Better to use 0.0.0.0 which is an invalid address and will fail immediately.
- dnzm 10y agoI think you're missing a couple: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19568411/list-of-facebook-cdn-addresses http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19568411/list-of-facebook...
- pfschell 10y agoHere's a longer list, suitable for pasting into your hosts file. http://pastebin.com/QX5dWnFQ http://pastebin.com/QX5dWnFQ
- perseusprime11 10y agoFacebook, please stop!
- andy_ppp 10y agoI'm seeing this now: "To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads, and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. By clicking or navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and off Facebook through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls: Cookies Policy." Am I signing a contract with Facebook by clicking on their website. Is that legal?
- unlinker 10y agoThat's the cookies warning that must be shown according to the law to all European users on all websites that use cookies.
- belorn 10y agoI have heard talks from one of the politician that wrote the directive , and they did not view "continue browsing" as a valid method. They are however only the writers of the directive, and they used the concept of "consent" as it was stated in a different directive. The interpretation of that directive was radically changed by most of the larger corporations as a direct reaction of the cookie law, and none has yet to challenge it. Tha politician was not very happy about the company lawyers change in complying with the "explicit informed consent" requirement, as that is the strongest from of consent that EU directives uses, and it basically is a ticking time bomb until someone abuses this new interpretation. "continued browsing of this website mean that you give a explicit informed consent that you agree to buy our service" is a major concern that I got, but maybe we will need such thing before it get thrown to the courts.
- ptaipale 10y agoThat actually reads very much like the "contract" that is enforced by EU on sites that use cookies to track users. It's quite irritating, IMO. (I mean the EU requirement. It doesn't add value, it just forces me to click a specific place in order to see a website.)
- joesmo 10y agoWill Mozilla finally make ad blocking the default or do we need yet another organization that can stand up to corporate pressure and money going forward to do so? That's my only question: who if anyone will bring a web browser to market that blocks ads and thereby malware by default?
- MrBra 10y agoInstall Disconnect or Ghostery right now and spread the word.
- dang 10y agoUrl changed from http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad-network-non-users-cookies-plug-ins http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad-netwo..., which points to this.
- quantum_nerd 10y agoDear Facebook, you can track me all over the net all you want. I am just not buying shit.
- weinzierl 10y ago> Users with a Facebook account can opt-out of the ad scheme by adjusting their settings, while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe. ...or by using a wide-spectrum blocker like uBlock Origin, and for the cookie warning problem there is a solution too: "EU: Prebake - Filter Obtrusive Cookie Notices"[1] [1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtrusive.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtr...
- ljk 10y agoAlso use extensions like NoScript/Privacy Badger to block the background scripts
- JTon 10y agoI enjoy using NoScript but I found I could not recommend it to non-techie friends, as it requires a lot of manual input to not break webpages. Is Privacy Badger more user friendly?
- guelo 10y agoNoScript really needs a black-list mode powered by a community-curated filter similar to adblock filters.
- RileyKyeden 10y agoHow is a NoScript with community filters different from uBlock/AdBlock? It would be vulnerable to the same profit-driven whitelisting AdBlock does.
- ljk 10y agoIt would be the same i think; If NoScript pulled the same thing AdBlock Plus did there would be a new app taking its place(like how uBlock Origin did)
- vthallam 10y agoThis is really a big thing since it directly affects the Google cash cow(Adwords/Doubleclick). Facebook has all the data in the world about a user(location, personal details, current mood) which google lacks and so they can target users on the rest of the internet in a better way.
- EGreg 10y agoGoogle has all their internet searches
- godzillabrennus 10y agoI guess to solve that Facebook needs to buy Yahoo and make it credible again.
- asimuvPR 10y agoPeople use Facebook to search, too. Not only standard Web search, but search with whatever context they were doing or talking about. I don't know how Google would have that data without having a widely adopted social network.
- newscracker 10y agoFrom whatever I have seen over the years (including the present moment), Facebook is light years behind Google in searching for stuff and getting all the relevant results within Facebook. I can't help but be very amused at the thought of Facebook being able to search the web well. :) To me (and my searches on Facebook) it has always appeared that Facebook search is a crippled and neglected product. It's so bad that I save important information I see on Facebook elsewhere. Facebook is the place for the ephemeral and constantly "new" stream of stuff to keep people clicking. So it doesn't seem to have had any good reason to put competent people in search related development so far.
- asimuvPR 10y agoYes, good points. Notice I meant people use Facebook for search. Not that people use Facebook for Web search. You can't directly search for people on google (to a degree), but you can do so in facebook (and other social networks). Point being that search is bigger than the standard web. Google is at and business disadvantage because it does not have a widely adopted social network. :)
- iamgopal 10y agoAds, Facebook and many a times google display network irritates me not because they demands my attention, but they do it by tracking my behavior, and hence usually shows me what I already know, used a million times, and can write review of ten pages. They take away discover-ability of internet from me, and I hate it.
- cloudjacker 10y ago.... like every other company does?
- callmeed 10y agoI just added FB ads to an iOS app this morning. The app doesn't even use FB login so I was suprised to see the sample ads were still very location-specific and targeted. They've also got web/HTML tools for placing ads on a domain.
- cdnsteve 10y agoSo Google Adwords/Adsense. That would have saved a whole article.
- DKnoll3 10y agoFrance already pumped the brakes on Facebook using their position of power to target non-users http://thehackernews.com/2016/02/facebook-france.html http://thehackernews.com/2016/02/facebook-france.html, I wonder where this will land them in the future with France, Brazil, or other countries that aren't as "friendly" with FB as the United States.
- ComodoHacker 10y agoSo we must assume their shadow profiles are complete now.
- aorth 10y agoSuper annoying and sleezy of Facebook, but basically they are doing what Google already does with Analytics. Completely unsurprising. Anyways, as a technically competent, privacy aware user, the first thing I do on a new installation of Chrome or Firefox is disable third-party cookies, install uBlock Origin and subscribe to a handful of third-party filter lists. I also do this for my friends and family, though I am more conservative on their installations.