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I can and do opt out of Google - I disable third-party cookies and run an ad blocker. That first step alone is enough to make a lot of ad targeting irrelevant
by nikcub 10y ago
I can and do opt out of Google - I disable third-party cookies and run an ad blocker.
That first step alone is enough to make a lot of ad targeting irrelevant.
What a lot of people might not realize is that with the shift to mobile browsing and Apple disabling third-party cookies by default a lot of the data on ad networks and brokers has gone completely dark. It's a real crisis in the industry, and ironically one of the things that is driving new moves such as combining ISP data for tracking.
The problem with the ISP tracking, and the reason why I think it is one of the greatest privacy threats consumers have ever faced - is that there is no easy tech solution. There is no 'disable ISP tracking' option in your browser in the same way there is for cookies.
Cookies are well regulated. Any attempt to bypass user controls results in FCC action. There is no equivalent to this with ISP data (any longer).
- rayiner 10y agoYou can easily block ISP tracking with VPN. You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones. And Google and others can also track you without cookies using e.g. browser fingerprinting techniques. http://www.venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/the-cookie-is-dead-heres-how-facebook-google-and-apple-are-tracking-you-now http://www.venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/the-cookie-is-dead-her....
- nikcub 10y agoVPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. But part of the solution if the regulations stay the way they are may well be that VPNs are made easier by being built into operating systems and provided by for ex. Apple as part of iCloud > You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones. I'm genuinely curious if you have a cite on Google using received emails in ad targeting. Likewise with receiving messages on Android devices - because neither are in their privacy policy[0]. Google do run services that aren't part of the ad targeting dragnet - partly because a lot of the data is useless if you're not a Google user and not terribly additionally useful if you are a Google customer > using e.g. browser fingerprinting techniques. The article you linked to talks about Google and Facebook using SSO. Actual browser fingerprinting to bypass user privacy settings is illegal. There are many cases of the FTC smacking companies down for that.[1][2][3][4] [0] https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/google-will-pay-225-million-settle-ftc-charges-it-misrepresented https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/googl... [2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/191409/kissmetrics-finalizes-supercookies-settlement.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/191409/kissme... [3] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291523/turn-settles-ftc-charges-over-supercookies.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291523/turn-s... [4] https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/20/ftc-tells-verizon-supercookie-partner-to-give-you-an-exit/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/20/ftc-tells-verizon-superc...
- mirimir 10y ago> VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. If you can buy something from Amazon, you can lease a VPN service. If you can download and install some silly game, you can download and install a VPN client. Which just works. So yes, it's easy. To opt out of third-party cookies, you actually need to tweak browser preferences. How is that easier than pay, download and install?
- kharms 10y agoI'm pretty tech literate, and even so getting an VPN is a huge pain. First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private enough? Do they really not log? Who do I trust? Next there is actual usage: my Phillips hue lights don't sync with my alarm if the VPN is turned on. Torrents don't work if the VPN isn't on the slowest protocol. A few more in that vein. This means that even after I've found and paid for a VPN I think I can trust, I have to be constantly switching it on and off, and have to be vigilant about what browsing I do when.
- dboreham 10y agoAnd you need to curate a fistful of routing rules to ensure your streaming traffic doesn't go down the VPN (no VPN provider wants your 20Mbit of Downton Abbey season 5 and you want that traffic to hit the CDN node down the street).