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The Guardian covertly sends your data to 58 tracking services
- dbdoug 9y agoI just tried opening the Guardian site and Ghostery reports only 4 trackers. One of which is Facebook.
- tim333 9y agoJust did the same. With uBlock and Ghostery on I get 3 trackers. With them off I get 22 trackers. I think maybe if you let one's script run it then loads a bunch of others.
- strict9 9y agoAnother axe to grind against a publication that doesn't like one individual that runs the twitter feed. Of course it isn't pointed out for anyone else.
- sien 9y agoThat would be a great website to set up. "How many trackers" and report on media sites.
- strict9 9y agoDefinitely agree. I'm not defending a clusterbomb of advertisement trackers but its disingenuous to call out only one. I feel ashamed I once respected them/him as an outlet of truth but in reality serves only to push a single person's agenda.
- papaf 9y agoIn recent weeks the Guardian has been running a series of articles about privacy online. The articles have been good and rare in that they included original journalism. I think that calling the newspaper out for the number of trackers is fair since it shows a mismatch between the behaviour of the company and the tone of the articles.
- jlgaddis 9y agoYep... I understand that they aren't doing it for the primary purpose of "surveillance" or "tracking" -- the primary intention is advertising and analytics, of course -- but I do feel this sort of thing is hypocritical. Hell, my blog has Google Analytics and such on it and so I feel like I'm a hypocritic since I use uBlock Origin (with quite restrictive settings). I do intend to remove the analytics/trackers at some point (actually, I plan to move to a completely static site and "redo" the whole thing -- I haven't even turned on HTTPS yet!), but I've been neglecting the site for years so there's a lot of work to do and, TBH, it really isn't very high on my priority list. I agree with the general premise of this tweet, though. If you're going to call out others for doing something (i.e. tracking users), you should first make sure that you aren't doing it the same thing. At the least, don't be a part of the very thing that you're bitching about.
- Hoefner 9y agoSelf-hosted Piwik isn't an option?
- gaius 9y agobut I do feel this sort of thing is hypocritical Wait ‘til you find out where the Graun is based for tax purposes... Left-wing-ness is just a product that they sell. They don’t believe in it anymore than everyone in McDonald’s head office eats Big Macs every day...
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
- jadedhacker 9y agoWhat do you guys think of this solution? I've considered it in the past but never tried it. https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/ This way you get data analytics without dispensing user data to third parties.
- cdubzzz 9y agoI used a self-hosted Piwik (Matomo) instance for analytics at my previous job for a few years. It worked fine for my basic needs and has a great API that I used for custom reports, but I wasn’t doing anything terribly complex. I recommend it, especially if you have full control of the decision and time to learn a bit about it.
- mysterypie 9y agoSelf-hosted analytics like Matomo tell you who visited your site for how long and from what IP address and what country, etc. But is this the only reason that people run trackers? I thought people ran trackers for the following reasons (in addition to analytics): (1) To get targeted ads, and thereby money because you showed a targeted ad. So if the Doubleclick tracker you embedded on your site sees that your visitors are watching lots of dog videos, they can serve you ads for dog food. I suppose (in theory) you could not embed the Doubleclick tracker and instead send Doubleclick the info you collected with your own self-hosted analytics, and get Doubleclick to send you the dog food ad which you insert into your site yourself. (2) To improve ranking on Google search. I've read that running Google Analytics improves your search ranking as opposed to letting Google simply crawl your site. And other reasons too? I welcome any corrections if I'm gravely misunderstanding the technology and motivations.
- gnode 9y agoGoogle and Facebook also have personal information about users which a self-hosted / privacy respecting solution inherently doesn't, such as gender, age, "likes", etc. I haven't used these analytics platforms myself, so I don't know how much of such data they reveal to customers.
- timbit42 9y agoAccording to my Ublock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Badger, and Cookie AutoDelete plugins, it's doing no such thing.
- jonhendry18 9y agoAt least the Guardian isn't a Putin operation.
- slowmovintarget 9y agoThat's not covert if the blocker can see them. The headline had me imagining the Guardian site was proxying tracking data to these 58 other trackers from their own client-side tracking that goes back to their origin. But nope, just the usual tracking script/cookie/beacon nonsense.
- lwansbrough 9y agoI co-run a network of websites that are ad supported. We'd consider our network to be quite optimized in terms of maximizing ad value. If you're unfamiliar with online advertising, 58 tracking services sounds like a lot. To me that just sounds like "optimized" header bidding -- ensuring you're (the publisher) getting the best value for the ads you're displaying. Google does a ton of work ensuring malicious content is not being served, but of course the transfer of user data (which could be considered malicious) is fundamental to their business model, as well as the business models of every company that serves ads to their users. And it's the wild west where that's concerned -- whoever can make the "best" use of the data will pay the highest price. This is why GDPR is catastrophic for ad-based EU business. Realistically, if 58 tracking services watching what you're doing is scary to you, you'd better be prepared to either: a.) pay your worth or b.) see many of the sites you use go out of business or have their ability to operate severely diminished.
- ams6110 9y agoI just use uBlock. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on a website.
- kosei 9y agoHow do you think it all plays out if everyone decides to block ads and not pay for content?
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe best content - done by passionate individuals for no monetary reasons - will stay. The good content will be kept afloat by donations. The usual corporate content will be written off as "marketing expense". The ad-supported worthless crap will disappear. The Internet would become leaner, but I can't see how it would not also become better.
- lwansbrough 9y ago> The best content - done by passionate individuals for no monetary reasons - will stay. That's assuming these people have other jobs (which will have to somehow be funded by something other than ads or selling data -- bye bye 90% of Silicon Valley.) Having other jobs means they won't be able to spend as much time on it and quality will suffer. > The good content will be kept afloat by donations. Donations often don't stretch beyond what's required to do the work that's been done before (people don't often donate once the donation goal has been reached.) This stifles growth. > The usual corporate content will be written off as "marketing expense". So companies that derive their value from the content they produce and sell ads on have to write off their entire business model as a "marketing expense". Good idea. Say goodbye to virtually all online publishing that isn't paywalled already. > The ad-supported worthless crap will disappear. You mean like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter...?
- stblack 9y agoI'm Steven Black and these are the hosts files some diligent friends and I continuously curate for you. Try the variant with the social media blocking if you really want to go cold turkey. https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- nathanaldensr 9y agoThanks to you and your friends! I've been using this HOSTS file for years on every device that allows me to edit it. Occasionally something otherwise missed by uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger will be caught by HOSTS and I'll see a nice "Can't connect to web server" message.
- whiteandnerdy 9y agoYour hosts file is amazing. I killed two hours trying to get decent ad blocking in midori, gave up, and got essentially perfect blocking with your hosts entries in under 5 minutes. Thanks for the work you do in curating this resource - it's awesome stuff.
- baud147258 9y agoI've started using your host files, it's working really well, thank you! The only downside is now I can't support ad-funded website by whitelisting them in my ad-blocker.
- slivym 9y agoThis is the problem with wikileaks. This has nothing to do with protecting people, or informing them of shady goings on. Wikileaks doesn't like The Guardian's reporting. So they're trying to claim that they're doing something wrong. In reality every single ad-supported website will do the same thing- including practically every website in existence from Breitbart to WashPo. So next time wikileaks sends out leaked info about bombs in Syria or intelligence gathering in the US ask yourself this question: Are they telling you everything, or are they serving their own political agenda?
- tom_mellior 9y agoWhile I completely agree with you about Wikileaks, and I do like the Guardian's reporting in general, (some of, depending on what and how you count) this tracking is a fact, and it's worth pointing out. On this particular issue, the Guardian is weaker than it could and should be. Especially because it keeps asking you (in a friendly and absoutely tolerable way!) for paid subscriptions. Would they keep tracking me if I paid? I'm fairly sure they would. In which case, meh.
- dbdoug 9y agoI pay and, as I mentioned before, when I open the Guardian main site, Ghostery only picks up 4 trackers.
- beedogs 9y agoYeah, sorry Wikileaks: absolutely nothing you say is worth trusting anymore, and this comparison of data exfiltration from Facebook with common ad network data collection is disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading by my estimation.