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Apple Changes Business of Selling Your Browsing Data

89 points by shawndumas 9y ago

ReverseCold 9y ago
AdNauseum is one of the most harmful things you can do against ads. Proof: Google pulled it from it's store, but not adblock. Ethically though? Not so sure. Safari adding that might make a bigger difference (but at what cost?)
- eridius 9y ago
  What is AdNauseum? I don't see that anywhere in the article.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    Instead of blocking ads, it clicks on all of them.
    - Ninn 9y ago
      (and hides them).. Sadly I think both the clicking part and the blocking part of it doesn't seem to be as well functioning as uBlock Origin, thats at least the reason i went back
    - scoot 9y ago
      I recently somehow ended up in the Tai Lopez* ad funnel. I decided to click on every ad, and the more ads I clicked on (and closed the landing page), the more the ad system thought I was a prospect. It ended up serving three different ad formats on almost every site I visited (all of which I clicked on). It was fun while it lasted, but at some point I got blacklisted. I haven't seen a Tai Lopez ad since. * One of those scammy "get rich on the internet telling people how to get rich on the internet", uhh "gurus".
      - neom 9y ago
        Here in my garage reading HN, thanks for that awesome knaaawlaaagde.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
  I use PiHole. Home and work.
- pacala 9y ago
  Ethical. Right. So fighting back against people that actively try to trick you make suboptimal economic decisions and which build the ultimate surveillance state is somehow ethical questionable. How about stop pushing unsolicited content to begin with? Then adnauseam has nothing to click on, ethical concerns solved.
- alwillis 9y ago
  AdNauseum is one of the most harmful things you can do against ads. Perhaps, but someone is still getting paid; it doesn’t matter if a human actually sees the ad or not. As long as someone gets paid, it incentives more ads and the violation of users’ privacy. I think a better approach is to disrupt the whole online ad market as it currently exists, which is what Brendan Eich with the Basic Attention Token and the Brave browser intend to do. Brave: https://brave.com https://brave.com Basic Attention Token: https://basicattentiontoken.org https://basicattentiontoken.org Video: https://vimeo.com/209336437 https://vimeo.com/209336437
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    Why not both in combination? Use one to make the current system unviable, which forces everyone onto the new system.
    - BrendanEich 9y ago
      Because loading all the (daisy-chained) 3rd party scripts and then spoofing clicks on ads compromises your privacy and on top of that, costs major page load and radio/data performance, compared to blocking aggressively as Brave does. This may amount to $23/month data-plan cost to user, per a NYT study).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sigsergv 9y ago
no paywall link https://t.co/tEC9BHWrnf https://t.co/tEC9BHWrnf
- autokill 9y ago
  This one works better for me: http://archive.is/fXZlh http://archive.is/fXZlh
  - alwillis 9y ago
    Same here; this one works great.
gergelykralik 9y ago
Paywall link, oh well....
- dang 9y ago
  Paywalls with workarounds are ok on HN, so please don't post like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
fareesh 9y ago
Couldn't read all of it due to paywall. What is technically happening with these features? As far as I understand it, there is a cookie that lives in the browser which gets sent with the request to the Google/Facebook ad script CDN, or an iframe reads the browser's cookies. Is Safari running some kind of Machine learning or other algorithm that guesses which cookies are hurting privacy and which ones aren't, and expires them sooner compared to other cookies? What are the odds that safari ends up breaking some other cookie driven functionality ? Can google theoretically use an iframe that reads localstorage instead? Websql? Can't Facebook still use the like button to track users? Or does this change mean having to sign in to like things. I feel like this is not possible to fix without breaking persistent storage for the web. Maybe I am missing something. There are a lot of use cases where I might need this. SSO for multiple domains is one that immediately comes to mind. I think that the current approach of private browsing mode which puts the user in charge is good enough from a privacy standpoint.
- Terretta 9y ago
  Answers to many of your questions here: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

89 points by shawndumas 9y ago

AdNauseum is one of the most harmful things you can do against ads. Proof: Google pulled it from it's store, but not adblock. Ethically though? Not so sure. Safari adding that might make a bigger difference (but at what cost?)

eridius 9y ago
What is AdNauseum? I don't see that anywhere in the article.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Instead of blocking ads, it clicks on all of them.
  - Ninn 9y ago
    (and hides them).. Sadly I think both the clicking part and the blocking part of it doesn't seem to be as well functioning as uBlock Origin, thats at least the reason i went back
  - scoot 9y ago
    I recently somehow ended up in the Tai Lopez* ad funnel. I decided to click on every ad, and the more ads I clicked on (and closed the landing page), the more the ad system thought I was a prospect. It ended up serving three different ad formats on almost every site I visited (all of which I clicked on). It was fun while it lasted, but at some point I got blacklisted. I haven't seen a Tai Lopez ad since. * One of those scammy "get rich on the internet telling people how to get rich on the internet", uhh "gurus".
    - neom 9y ago
      Here in my garage reading HN, thanks for that awesome knaaawlaaagde.
qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
I use PiHole. Home and work.
pacala 9y ago
Ethical. Right. So fighting back against people that actively try to trick you make suboptimal economic decisions and which build the ultimate surveillance state is somehow ethical questionable. How about stop pushing unsolicited content to begin with? Then adnauseam has nothing to click on, ethical concerns solved.
alwillis 9y ago
AdNauseum is one of the most harmful things you can do against ads. Perhaps, but someone is still getting paid; it doesn’t matter if a human actually sees the ad or not. As long as someone gets paid, it incentives more ads and the violation of users’ privacy. I think a better approach is to disrupt the whole online ad market as it currently exists, which is what Brendan Eich with the Basic Attention Token and the Brave browser intend to do. Brave: https://brave.com https://brave.com Basic Attention Token: https://basicattentiontoken.org https://basicattentiontoken.org Video: https://vimeo.com/209336437 https://vimeo.com/209336437
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  Why not both in combination? Use one to make the current system unviable, which forces everyone onto the new system.
  - BrendanEich 9y ago
    Because loading all the (daisy-chained) 3rd party scripts and then spoofing clicks on ads compromises your privacy and on top of that, costs major page load and radio/data performance, compared to blocking aggressively as Brave does. This may amount to $23/month data-plan cost to user, per a NYT study).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sigsergv 9y ago

no paywall link https://t.co/tEC9BHWrnf https://t.co/tEC9BHWrnf

autokill 9y ago
This one works better for me: http://archive.is/fXZlh http://archive.is/fXZlh
- alwillis 9y ago
  Same here; this one works great.

gergelykralik 9y ago

Paywall link, oh well....

dang 9y ago
Paywalls with workarounds are ok on HN, so please don't post like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

fareesh 9y ago

Couldn't read all of it due to paywall. What is technically happening with these features? As far as I understand it, there is a cookie that lives in the browser which gets sent with the request to the Google/Facebook ad script CDN, or an iframe reads the browser's cookies. Is Safari running some kind of Machine learning or other algorithm that guesses which cookies are hurting privacy and which ones aren't, and expires them sooner compared to other cookies? What are the odds that safari ends up breaking some other cookie driven functionality ? Can google theoretically use an iframe that reads localstorage instead? Websql? Can't Facebook still use the like button to track users? Or does this change mean having to sign in to like things. I feel like this is not possible to fix without breaking persistent storage for the web. Maybe I am missing something. There are a lot of use cases where I might need this. SSO for multiple domains is one that immediately comes to mind. I think that the current approach of private browsing mode which puts the user in charge is good enough from a privacy standpoint.

Terretta 9y ago
Answers to many of your questions here: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...