6 ms·

Says the site with ~20-30 crapware JS trackers (12 blocked by uBlock, 23 by uMatrix). I'm not forgiving FB here, just pointing out that others are often similar

by Yizahi 8y ago

Says the site with ~20-30 crapware JS trackers (12 blocked by uBlock, 23 by uMatrix). I'm not forgiving FB here, just pointing out that others are often similarly bad.

isodude 8y ago
This is the reason I've stopped surfing the web and stay on news aggregate sites. It's madness how many dependencies sites have. Having Little Snitch on and not allowing general port 80/443 will make you perfectly aware.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  Why don't you use a blocker extension?
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    I trust ublock well enough, but it's a risk - Adblock Plus on the one hand basically started collecting advertising data and selling whitelisting to advertisers, and plugins generally have an evergreen auto-updating system. It's happened hundreds of times that a plugin was bought and malicious tracking, ad-injecting and/or cryptocurrency mining code was injected without the user being made aware or the party responsible for delivering updates (Google, Mozilla) taking action against these practices or at the very least warning their users. TL;DR: Blocker extensions are easy but they can be compromised.
    - mtreis86 8y ago
      https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix is opensource and is basically a firewall built in a browser extension
    - kowdermeister 8y ago
      Everything can be compromised. Going outside of the building is a risk. In case of uBlock it would probably turn out pretty quickly if something fishy is going on. My point is that the benefits are greater for me than the risks. You could actually roll your own uBlock extension: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock then write a script that updates it in your browser. Is that safe enough? :)
  - isodude 8y ago
    Because I should not have to avoid it. Then it's broken by default and we should vote by not visiting.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  Please don't stop surfing the web, that is insane. You are staying locked in your news aggregator sites like someone with agoraphobia, that is even more unhealthy than whatever beasties you think are out there waiting for you.
  - isodude 8y ago
    Maybe I'm starting to show grandpa syndrome, but I tend towards getting news from public channels/radio here. The amount of click bait articles that's in ad-based sources are just astonishing. Trying to keep the head space clean, and there is only so much time at my disposal with caring for a family. So at the same time I got pissed about how much deps sites rely on, I discovered that there wasn't much to miss either. It's like dropping facebook, just a relief. To be fair I'm talking about news outlets mainly. I was there when we had the BBS with dial-up modems. HTML was sweet, but it got quite boring when it faced reality. It's easy for people to share now, but just how easy can it be for people to care about what they share and how? (Like caring about how much tracking there is etc.) My wife and I strongly disagree, she lives in the real world and actually like how well she can communicate and I'm just overwhelmed instead and care about the technicalities.
  - vertexFarm 8y ago
    The certainty with which you make this statement seems undeserved. There are situations when extreme deviations from cultural norms is perfectly healthy. Like abstaining from tobacco in the 1950s or something to that effect. The jury's still out on the health effects of our digital culture. It's too strange and too young to really get clean long-term results on it. But I would be utterly floored if it was having no significant effect on our well-being and culture. There's probably some positive and some negative, but hey--cigarettes help aid digestion, after all.
    - isodude 8y ago
      For me at least the digital life have a bad effect. But I'm sure that's related to my specific personality. I've written about it here before, but leaving the digital life completely for periods is easily the most healthiest things I've done.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  I do all of my browsing through HN with reader view on by default. Have yet to see an ad, pop up or anything annoying. Gave up on desktop browsing entirely as some sites do not offer reader view.
  - isodude 8y ago
    I should really start using RSS again, but I do remember the amount of news that you had to sort through everyday. HN does that in a fairly good fashion. There's just to much info to handle. Reader view is a good option, for avoiding answering on GDPR questions as well :)
SippinLean 8y ago
Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the article's criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- stabbles 8y ago
  As op admits
  - Kurtz79 8y ago
    The moment you say "everybody does that" (which is often very debatable), you are implicitly being an apologist for the subject of that specific criticism.
    - Yizahi 8y ago
      Well first of all it is not really debatable in case of spying by bigcorps. And I wrote "everyone does that" comment for one reason - after FB scandal quiets down we should not forget that by eliminating FB from our life we didn't even start getting out of this spying mess, given how everyone does it.
    - BeetleB 8y ago
      A common refrain, but not logically sound.
mattigames 8y ago
Bah, for more crying about web-tracking the browser is still a sandboxed environment, in the other hand what the article is talking here is an app with permanent GPS access, notifications, etc etc.
- Yizahi 8y ago
  Just different levels of "bad". For example Google is by default having all the same data about users (on Android) and more, of course it engages in the same activities as FB. Same as all other fat clients for social networks. It is almost impossible to escape spying by bigcorps. E.g. I tried deleting Chrome from my mobile and I can't, I could only disable it. So crapware too? I'd say yes. PS: read about "notifications" and remembered a funny story about Chrome. I was once given a Samsung phone to fix some AD notifications coming up regularly. And it was not obvious for some reason who was sending them. Apparently some apps can hijack default browser setting and force open their links in Chrome (which, again, isn't possible to remove), and Chrome by default allowed notifications from sites. After guessing this and opening Chrome I found out that there were several dozen open tabs, and some them were sending "useful" notifications. Default browser on that phone since buying the device was "Internet" app by Samsung. Same stuff, only without notifications, also happened on my own phone where Firefox is default. Until I force disabled Chrome some apps continued to hijack defaults and opened links in Chrome.
  - mattigames 8y ago
    Pretty sure you can use android without signing into your google account, but most people avoid doing so because its extremely convenient to sync your other devices with your phone. At the end of the day people voted with their wallets, and the wallets said convenience triumphs all, the only slight chance of spying protection is government regulation.
    - justtopost 8y ago
      As someone attempting to use a stock samsung rom without google, its possible, but super annoying and buggy. I would not expect any reasonable person with an alternative to go through this, thechie or not. Google has tied into every part of the OS, seemingly for this reason. I am about to throw in the towel and try to sell this for a different used phone with better lineage (or other rom) support. Even lineage does not cut out google integration completely. Your identifiable device details are still sent to google to 'check for internet' constantly.
StreamBright 8y ago
Imagine the impact on energy consumption having to run these ad blockers + running the ad infrastructure. Global warming, is that you?
- darepublic 8y ago
  So visiting a web page without ublock and the like is akin to idling your car in the morning
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    If we could visualize how much energy is wasted on ad that would be really good. I think we need an IoC approach for advertising to get this fixed.
- Yizahi 8y ago
  It's called war of attrition, I think.
- Majestic121 8y ago
  I looked for evidence for your claim as in my mind, energy consumption for the ad industry would not be that impressive. I found a paper written in 2010 for the Netherlands [1], claiming that : "Thus, web advertisements increase the total energy consumption of PCs by 3.4%." That's not counting the cost of running the infrastructure, and I suspect ads and tracking probably did not evolve in the right (i.e. less energy hungry) way in the last 9 years. As for the current consumption of power by 'client devices', it is estimated to consume 5% of total world electricity [2] I could not find any number on the energy consumption on the other side, i.e. servers/infras. As a (very) rough estimation, without taking into account the 'server' side of ads, we can estimate the energy cost of ads to represent ~0.17% of total energy produced in a year. In the end, I stand corrected : the amount of energy consumed is far from negligible at that scale. However, while it is definitely not negligible on absolute terms, I think there are lower hanging fruits to focus on to fight global warming, such as reliance on fossil fuels, common use of products made on the other side of the world, meat consumption... [1] : https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energy-cost-of-web-advertising https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energ... [2] : http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-consume-one-fifth-global-electricity-2025/ http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-con...
ProAm 8y ago
Except you voluntarily went to the site.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Except you voluntarily bought the phone. The idea that interaction implies blanket consent is silly.
  - ProAm 8y ago
    Im not sure they tell you all the apps that are preinstalled per carrier before you buy a phone. Ive never seen a list. You're not wrong though.
    - itmeyou 8y ago
      Well websites definitely don't list the trackers anywhere at all, let alone before you reach them.
      - ProAm 8y ago
        Im also not paying to visit the website.
        Tempest1981 8y ago
        Imagine truth in advertising, if the phone/laptop said "price reduced $17 due to included crapware!" Probably still wouldn't dissuade most buyers, unfortunately.
        Yizahi 8y ago
        If I had to guess without any real numbers I'd say that spyware is a) not reducing the cost of the device anyway (no reason to cut price), b) real profits per device are closer to cents than dollars. I imagine advertising "Hey, User, remember that amazing Phone Model 1 you could buy for 600$? Now you can buy it with included spying software for your convenience, for the same amazing 600$ and we will earn 20 cents more from each deal! How cool is that, heh?! You want it too, right?!" :)

by Yizahi 8y ago

Says the site with ~20-30 crapware JS trackers (12 blocked by uBlock, 23 by uMatrix). I'm not forgiving FB here, just pointing out that others are often similarly bad.

isodude 8y ago

This is the reason I've stopped surfing the web and stay on news aggregate sites. It's madness how many dependencies sites have. Having Little Snitch on and not allowing general port 80/443 will make you perfectly aware.

kowdermeister 8y ago
Why don't you use a blocker extension?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I trust ublock well enough, but it's a risk - Adblock Plus on the one hand basically started collecting advertising data and selling whitelisting to advertisers, and plugins generally have an evergreen auto-updating system. It's happened hundreds of times that a plugin was bought and malicious tracking, ad-injecting and/or cryptocurrency mining code was injected without the user being made aware or the party responsible for delivering updates (Google, Mozilla) taking action against these practices or at the very least warning their users. TL;DR: Blocker extensions are easy but they can be compromised.
  - mtreis86 8y ago
    https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix is opensource and is basically a firewall built in a browser extension
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    Everything can be compromised. Going outside of the building is a risk. In case of uBlock it would probably turn out pretty quickly if something fishy is going on. My point is that the benefits are greater for me than the risks. You could actually roll your own uBlock extension: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock then write a script that updates it in your browser. Is that safe enough? :)
- isodude 8y ago
  Because I should not have to avoid it. Then it's broken by default and we should vote by not visiting.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Please don't stop surfing the web, that is insane. You are staying locked in your news aggregator sites like someone with agoraphobia, that is even more unhealthy than whatever beasties you think are out there waiting for you.
- isodude 8y ago
  Maybe I'm starting to show grandpa syndrome, but I tend towards getting news from public channels/radio here. The amount of click bait articles that's in ad-based sources are just astonishing. Trying to keep the head space clean, and there is only so much time at my disposal with caring for a family. So at the same time I got pissed about how much deps sites rely on, I discovered that there wasn't much to miss either. It's like dropping facebook, just a relief. To be fair I'm talking about news outlets mainly. I was there when we had the BBS with dial-up modems. HTML was sweet, but it got quite boring when it faced reality. It's easy for people to share now, but just how easy can it be for people to care about what they share and how? (Like caring about how much tracking there is etc.) My wife and I strongly disagree, she lives in the real world and actually like how well she can communicate and I'm just overwhelmed instead and care about the technicalities.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  The certainty with which you make this statement seems undeserved. There are situations when extreme deviations from cultural norms is perfectly healthy. Like abstaining from tobacco in the 1950s or something to that effect. The jury's still out on the health effects of our digital culture. It's too strange and too young to really get clean long-term results on it. But I would be utterly floored if it was having no significant effect on our well-being and culture. There's probably some positive and some negative, but hey--cigarettes help aid digestion, after all.
  - isodude 8y ago
    For me at least the digital life have a bad effect. But I'm sure that's related to my specific personality. I've written about it here before, but leaving the digital life completely for periods is easily the most healthiest things I've done.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I do all of my browsing through HN with reader view on by default. Have yet to see an ad, pop up or anything annoying. Gave up on desktop browsing entirely as some sites do not offer reader view.
- isodude 8y ago
  I should really start using RSS again, but I do remember the amount of news that you had to sort through everyday. HN does that in a fairly good fashion. There's just to much info to handle. Reader view is a good option, for avoiding answering on GDPR questions as well :)

SippinLean 8y ago

Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the article's criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

stabbles 8y ago
As op admits
- Kurtz79 8y ago
  The moment you say "everybody does that" (which is often very debatable), you are implicitly being an apologist for the subject of that specific criticism.
  - Yizahi 8y ago
    Well first of all it is not really debatable in case of spying by bigcorps. And I wrote "everyone does that" comment for one reason - after FB scandal quiets down we should not forget that by eliminating FB from our life we didn't even start getting out of this spying mess, given how everyone does it.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    A common refrain, but not logically sound.

mattigames 8y ago

Bah, for more crying about web-tracking the browser is still a sandboxed environment, in the other hand what the article is talking here is an app with permanent GPS access, notifications, etc etc.

Yizahi 8y ago
Just different levels of "bad". For example Google is by default having all the same data about users (on Android) and more, of course it engages in the same activities as FB. Same as all other fat clients for social networks. It is almost impossible to escape spying by bigcorps. E.g. I tried deleting Chrome from my mobile and I can't, I could only disable it. So crapware too? I'd say yes. PS: read about "notifications" and remembered a funny story about Chrome. I was once given a Samsung phone to fix some AD notifications coming up regularly. And it was not obvious for some reason who was sending them. Apparently some apps can hijack default browser setting and force open their links in Chrome (which, again, isn't possible to remove), and Chrome by default allowed notifications from sites. After guessing this and opening Chrome I found out that there were several dozen open tabs, and some them were sending "useful" notifications. Default browser on that phone since buying the device was "Internet" app by Samsung. Same stuff, only without notifications, also happened on my own phone where Firefox is default. Until I force disabled Chrome some apps continued to hijack defaults and opened links in Chrome.
- mattigames 8y ago
  Pretty sure you can use android without signing into your google account, but most people avoid doing so because its extremely convenient to sync your other devices with your phone. At the end of the day people voted with their wallets, and the wallets said convenience triumphs all, the only slight chance of spying protection is government regulation.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    As someone attempting to use a stock samsung rom without google, its possible, but super annoying and buggy. I would not expect any reasonable person with an alternative to go through this, thechie or not. Google has tied into every part of the OS, seemingly for this reason. I am about to throw in the towel and try to sell this for a different used phone with better lineage (or other rom) support. Even lineage does not cut out google integration completely. Your identifiable device details are still sent to google to 'check for internet' constantly.

StreamBright 8y ago

Imagine the impact on energy consumption having to run these ad blockers + running the ad infrastructure. Global warming, is that you?

darepublic 8y ago
So visiting a web page without ublock and the like is akin to idling your car in the morning
- StreamBright 8y ago
  If we could visualize how much energy is wasted on ad that would be really good. I think we need an IoC approach for advertising to get this fixed.
Yizahi 8y ago
It's called war of attrition, I think.
Majestic121 8y ago
I looked for evidence for your claim as in my mind, energy consumption for the ad industry would not be that impressive. I found a paper written in 2010 for the Netherlands [1], claiming that : "Thus, web advertisements increase the total energy consumption of PCs by 3.4%." That's not counting the cost of running the infrastructure, and I suspect ads and tracking probably did not evolve in the right (i.e. less energy hungry) way in the last 9 years. As for the current consumption of power by 'client devices', it is estimated to consume 5% of total world electricity [2] I could not find any number on the energy consumption on the other side, i.e. servers/infras. As a (very) rough estimation, without taking into account the 'server' side of ads, we can estimate the energy cost of ads to represent ~0.17% of total energy produced in a year. In the end, I stand corrected : the amount of energy consumed is far from negligible at that scale. However, while it is definitely not negligible on absolute terms, I think there are lower hanging fruits to focus on to fight global warming, such as reliance on fossil fuels, common use of products made on the other side of the world, meat consumption... [1] : https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energy-cost-of-web-advertising https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energ... [2] : http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-consume-one-fifth-global-electricity-2025/ http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-con...

ProAm 8y ago

Except you voluntarily went to the site.

Spivak 8y ago
Except you voluntarily bought the phone. The idea that interaction implies blanket consent is silly.
- ProAm 8y ago
  Im not sure they tell you all the apps that are preinstalled per carrier before you buy a phone. Ive never seen a list. You're not wrong though.
  - itmeyou 8y ago
    Well websites definitely don't list the trackers anywhere at all, let alone before you reach them.
    - ProAm 8y ago
      Im also not paying to visit the website.
      - Tempest1981 8y ago
        Imagine truth in advertising, if the phone/laptop said "price reduced $17 due to included crapware!" Probably still wouldn't dissuade most buyers, unfortunately.
        Yizahi 8y ago
        If I had to guess without any real numbers I'd say that spyware is a) not reducing the cost of the device anyway (no reason to cut price), b) real profits per device are closer to cents than dollars. I imagine advertising "Hey, User, remember that amazing Phone Model 1 you could buy for 600$? Now you can buy it with included spying software for your convenience, for the same amazing 600$ and we will earn 20 cents more from each deal! How cool is that, heh?! You want it too, right?!" :)