33 ms·
Hey advertisers, track this
- dingo_bat 7y agoSad that it doesn't work on Firefox.
- reustle 7y agoI'm really afraid to click one of those links on mobile. Does it just spawn 100 new tabs?
- ases 7y agoYes, it does. Though in Firefox it spawns 20 at a time and every time you click on the original tab it spawns another 20.
- hoppi 7y agoChromium does 1 at a time for me, 1 every second - was quite intensive.
- treerock 7y agoit says: "It looks like you're visiting Track This on your phone. Please use Desktop to activate your persona. Trust us, you don't really want to open 100 tabs on from your phone in any case."
- mclehman 7y agoWhere's the fun in having the number of open tabs visible instead of just ':D'? I honestly can't remember the last time that was the case on my phone.
- floatingatoll 7y agoI smiled the first time I saw it.
- codegladiator 7y agoYes. One by one on Opera, didn't hang/slow-down my machine though.
- r1ch 7y agoNot really sure that a browser should allow a site to open 100 tabs programmatically, if anything this is telling me that Firefox is open to such abuse.
- jmkni 7y agoIf you are on Firefox, it actually recommends using another browser: > It looks like you’re on Firefox. Because Firefox builds in all kinds of protections against malicious sites, it’ll only open 20 tabs at a time—and only if you allow pop-ups from this page. While 20 is enough, to see how wild 100 tabs can really get, try Track This on another browser.
- myfonj 7y agoIt would be nice to see what sites it is going to open. And maybe worth mentioning you can use Container Tab (or maybe even anonymous window) to test/verify this without compromising your real fondly crafted advertising profile.
- micpalmia 7y agoWhile this looks and feels fun, I also felt so bad - it's such a huge waste of energy, computing resources and bandwith.
- orcdork 7y agoOne could say the same for the ads industry.
- kodz4 7y agoThe ad industry has a higher stake. What they do pays their mortgages/medical/college bills. When you fight someone who has more to loose, it usually is a waste of energy. If you want them to change you have to reduce the stakes for them.
- solarkraft 7y ago> If you want them to change you have to reduce the stakes for them. Why? It just has to become unprofitable for them to look for something else. They will adjust their stakes accordingly (are you proposing getting them a different source of income? wouldn't someone greedy just accept both?).
- Double_a_92 7y agoWatching some random Youtube video probably consumes much more resources.
- amelius 7y agoSeems a bit like the AdNauseam project, except more refined because it allows the user to select a profile. https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
- omeid2 7y agoPlease let us know what links you're going to open.
- no1youknowz 7y agoThere are companies such as Forensiq [0] and a few others I can't quite recall now that work to fight ad fraud. [0]: https://impact.com/ad-fraud-detection/ https://impact.com/ad-fraud-detection/ Believe me, there are many players in this space that work tirelessly to compromise mobiles and try to emulate real users to earn profits on PPC campaigns. So honestly, this is just a waste of time. Whatever patterns these guys come up with. It'll be defeated by those to fight the real bad guys.
- ACow_Adonis 7y agoWell that's rather defeatist. Its also not correct. I've done a lot of work in data linking, which I consider basically the same thing, albeit not with advertising or ad fraud as the necessary subject matter. Now while its true that a lot of the things people do to lessen their fingerprint/signal is often not effective, its simply not true that such things are always a priori defeatable. Theoretically, you have to do some combination of plugging the leaks, increasing the noise, or dropping the signal. And if you do that then signal becomes harder and harder to extract. And its not even black and white like total win/lose. You could stop advertisers from finding out certain things, or change the relative value/cost of what's possible/profitable, or the degree of accuracy with which they can state certain things. Indeed, for instance, if you can get regular people's actions and behaviours to look more and more like these bots or fraudsters, that likely lessens the effectiveness of their machine learning techniques...
- navaati 7y agoTHIS is the Mozilla I like ! Impertinent, guerilla, middle finger giving !
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoLinus Torvalds: “Nvidia, Fuck You!” Just like this!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- navaati 7y agoOn a sad note, I couldn't stop myself thinking "this «doomsday» profile may be a bit dangerous to run, it could get you on some nasty lists" and wouldn't dare to run it. Shows how bad the chilling effect has become…
- dannyw 7y agoSo what if you're on a list? I ran a Tor exit node on my home static IP for years. No dramas.
- kzzzznot 7y agoAnecdotal
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoYup; the grandparent is likely on a List already for being involved in child pornograpy and such (inadvertently, but you know that's a big part of what TOR is used for).
- annon2003 7y agoDon't shoot the messenger
- r3bl 7y ago> but you know that's a big part of what TOR is used for Citation needed please. That's the juicier stuff that makes its way into the news. "A person living under an oppressive government evading censorship" will never be as juicy to write about as "murderers for hire on the dark web". That says absolutely nothing about the actual usage of Tor, so I'd like to see you back up that "big part" part.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 7y ago
- atulvi 7y agoI feel by doing this, ad makers will create more aggressive tactics to fingerprint users
- petercooper 7y ago"WARNING! THIS WILL OPEN 100+ TABS IN YOUR BROWSER. BE PREPARED!" I'm on a full fat iMac Pro and that's still going to be a big fat "nope" from me :-D
- braythwayt 7y agoSee, if you had the new monitor stand, it would be engineered to handle the weight of a hundred tabs on screen. People don’t think about these power user use cases when they pooh-pooh Apple’s hardware. /ducks
- petercooper 7y agoHa! It's not even the hardware I'm worried about. It's Chrome ;-)
- yetihehe 7y agoThat's why they use anodized aluminum!
- maaaats 7y agoGood tabs in firefox are more lean, then.
- neilv 7y agoSince before Netscape originally jumpstarted the Web user tracking and profiling surveillance industry, we already knew that one of the big categories of risk of such databases is being penalized for inaccurate information (and being unable to correct it, or even know it's there). Think twice before you take a poo in your own profiles. If you want to poison your profile without it backfiring on you, you might want to wait until pretty much all profiles are poisoned simultaneously.
- raxxorrax 7y agoWhat can they do, display the wrong products? Oh, the horror... I would certainly like to poison my profile. Preferably with all the kinky stuff.
- neilv 7y agoThe pervasive intimate surveillance is a grave matter. These profiles do and will affect you in many more ways. "Tt's about showing you ads that are relevant" has been an industry PR lie for a long time.
- raxxorrax 7y agoI agree that it is a grave matter which many people take far too lightly. But I also refuse to be scared by some junkie advertisers. And currently we at least are still talking about mainly pseudo-anonymous profiles. Filling this data with wrong info takes away most of the value.
- hatsunearu 7y agoI like the hypebeast guy wearing a "Superior" t-shirt.
- Fnoord 7y agoActually I'd buy a t-shirt with this URL (or a QR code for the URL) in a heartbeat. Subversive t-shirts are a way to take your part in trying to change the world for the better.
- ohithereyou 7y agoNothing says 'fuck capitalism' like buying a shirt from a company who uses sweatshop child labor in a third world country to spew out product so bad that it will end up in a landfill in six months.
- neilv 7y ago`https://trackthis.link/` https://trackthis.link/` requests `https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js` https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js` on page load. Which, besides being a bad idea for privacy on any site, makes much of this particular site's ostensible purpose even easier to defeat.
- contras1970 7y agothat's so tone-deaf from mozilla... hello? anyone behind the driving wheel there? what are your priorities? trying to win the game of hypocrisy? seriously, this is a great display of dishonesty at the org level.
- beshrkayali 7y agoMozilla has been tone-deaf for a while unfortunately. It became obvious during the Net Neutrality discussion, but even befor with their association with Google which is unclean imho.
- neilv 7y agoI wouldn't say dishonesty; there are numerous ways that could've oopsed in. Our industry and technology has gotten pretty twisted. Getting an understanding of the extent of the bloated mess, shoveling our way up for air, shaking up practices that have become automatic, and cleaning up all the corners that are dirty... is going to take time.
- AsusFan 7y agoThis "accident" didn't happen in isolation. Firefox already ships with telemetry enabled by default, superfluous closed source components (pocket) and a remote control mechanism which Mozilla has already abused "for fun" (remember that Mr Robot thing?). Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
- Jonnax 7y agoGo use a Blink based browser whose development and roadmap is controlled by an advertising company instead then.
- Uplink 7y agoI never understood why advertisers insist on giving me "relevant" ads. I find it better if the ads are diverse and all over the place, as I discover new things. The "relevant" ads are usually about stuff I just bought, so useless to me. I find this site insightful in terms of discovering new things. It could be made into some sort of tumbler for ads. :)
- pb060 7y agoAre they really relevant? According to advertisers I am in constant need of a slimmer wallet and a stair lift, while I'm rather happy with my current wallet, and my legs are still more or less ok.
- dwighttk 7y agonice legs... it'd be a shame if anything happened to them...
- Klathmon 7y agoYou can opt out of the relevant add in all major networks. I know I did once, and it was so much worse. Most ads were for shit I absolutely would never care about. Weight loss systems, beauty products, child care products, quit smoking assistance systems, etc... I know this is sacrilegious on HN, but I personally prefer targeted ads to that. I still think you and everyone else should be able to not have ads targeted if you don't want, and I'm all for alternative funding systems where you pay for content directly, but I'd much rather see ads for SaaS companies I may use and movies I'm interested in over that stuff.
- mcv 7y agoI don't mind if they're actually relevant ads, but they rarely are. Quite regularly, they keep showing me the same irrelevant ad over and over and over again. The logic behind their ad selection completely eludes me. Maybe I've blocked enough cookies that they actually know nothing about me? But I use plenty of Google services, and I'm generally logged in to my Google account by default. Maybe the problem is that the things I'm interested in, are things that don't generally advertise much. Not on such broad generic advertising networks, at least.
- TheGrumpyBrit 7y agoI wonder how many of those tabs are affiliate links?
- user17843 7y agoI looked at the source code and indeed they put referrer IDs to the amazon links. It's even a dedicated ID for each link, to see the number of purchases for each link. So mozilla is taking part in the tracking.
- dewey 7y agoDo you know it's their IDs and not some of the Amazon Smile charities?
- user17843 7y agothe smile links look different, burt I am not entirely sure about the referrer IDs. They look like: - fsclp_pl_dp_12 - fsclp_pl_dp_11 with each link having a distinct number, counting down to 1. It doesn't look like a typical referrer ID, so it is probably something that Amazon generates, although I don't know under what condition.
- inanutshellus 7y agoI suspect the comments here are largely missing the point. IMHO, Mozilla isn't offering "Track THIS" as a solution to being tracked, instead it's a demo of how tailored one's ads are, so one will be offended enough to turn off 3rd party cookies.
- apetresc 7y agoI think it may backfire. In my opinion, the dangers of "tracking" and "customization" are dramatically overblown and I suspect the average user has a much more sinister idea of what it all means than the reality. Some people are going to try this demo and realize "Huh, so 'surveillance capitalism' really just means that I see better ads?" Most non-technical people have this dystopian illusion when they hear about all of Facebook/Google/Amazon's fabled super-advanced-magic-tracking that there's either a human or a near-sentient robot listening in to every facet of their lives and forming a judgmental, human opinion of them as a person. Once they realize this shit is so basic that opening up a few browser tabs of stuff you don't actually like is enough to trick it, I think their apathy will increase, not decrease.
- inanutshellus 7y agoHm, interesting. For my part, I see a difference between the utility of tracking purchases and that of personality-categorization that social media sites use.... but you do have a point. What do you suggest?
- danShumway 7y agoAnecdotally, I had to explain to a family member recently how they got Twitter ads for an event they dropped a friend off at, even though they didn't personally search for or attend the event. They were confused by how this happened, and they knew I was the weird privacy person in the family to ask. They proposed the simple, obvious solution: "Twitter is listening to my microphone." I countered with, "No, Twitter knows you're friends with this person, and because they have access to both of your location data, they know you were visiting this person at the same time that they searched for and went to this event." My family member said that my explanation didn't make them feel any better, at all, and then deleted Twitter off of their phone. I don't know if that person is typical or not, but I will say that when you see something yourself it can sometimes make you feel more vulnerable and disturbed than when you hear about it second hand. Tracking is so ubiquitous that there's kind of an abstract, "but really it's not so bad" quality to it. People joke about the super-advanced-magic-tracking, but they don't really believe it on an emotional level. Or they believe it's super competent and dehumanized and subtle. I think projects like this have the potential to maybe make it feel more tangible. Hyper-advanced systems feel more theoretical and less dangerous than, "hey, I'm literally just watching you browse the web." In my (again anecdotal) experience, magical systems are dismissable, but people get worked up over, "somebody's looking in my window."
- zulgan 7y agoNot paying for content (small games, blogs, vlogs, journalism, code, etc..) in the last 20 years, is now one of my biggest regrets. I remember back then I even had a small addon that was constantly showing me ads and I was getting money for doing nothing, I thought it was nothing. Now we have to suffer fake content, incredibly well researched click-baits, short term conversion optimized (good trailer, bad content) media and of course tracking to incredible extend. Every single machine learning algorithm trying to push us to more extreme world views so we stay on the platform to consume more contend and see more ads. Every time my young daughter is watching youtube, I can see how what it is recommending and how easy it is to manipulate her. Few weeks ago it hit me, that I sold her mind, because I did not pay, and now everything is beyond repair. PS: I just finished listening a great reading of 1984 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM3GFyuJwQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM3GFyuJwQ8) and am in very dark place. /
- kennyadam 7y agoI feel exactly the same way. I now try to pay whenever I can to avoid ads. YouTube Premium, Slate Plus, etc. I also make sure I contribute to the Patreons of the content I enjoy, but often this results in the creator being greedy and running ads when they make more than enough from Patreon. When that happens, I usually stop my donations and just suffer the ads.
- saw-lau 7y ago'I remember back then I even had a small addon that was constantly showing me ads and I was getting money for doing nothing.' AllAdvantage? I got a few quid from them back in the day. Strange times... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage
- taddevries 7y agoWow that's a thing I had forgotten about. I had an original iMac at the time and built a mouse mover and random site loader to trick the system. I think I made about $25 total because they shutdown shortly after that.
- 7y ago
- delibes 7y agoLOL, ran it in private window. We have a single outward facing office IP address, and a few tabs were for things like bras and lingerie, so I'm now waiting to see if it affected others on the office network!
- user17843 7y agoIP tracking is fairly uncommon, no?
- gloflo 7y agoNope, widespread. Try looking at the YouTube frontpage when in a foreign WiFi...
- morgosmaci 7y agoI would guess that as third party cookie blocking becomes more popular, the more aggressive sites will fall back to IP tracking more often.
- nonwifehaver3 7y agoMy Duolingo ads disagree.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 7y ago> This will show you ads for products you might not be interested in at all You can just say, "your regular browsing experience won't be impacted."
- t0astbread 7y agoCouldn't a burst of unusual activity like this be easily detected? Then again, advertisers probably don't go the extra mile to cover the 1% that's using this tool...
- c0vfefe 7y agoMore like 0.00001%.
- dgemm 7y agoIs there a simple solution to automatically clear cookies when a tab is closed, similar to closing a private mode browser?
- chaosfox 7y agocookie autodelete addon.
- fistikcisahap 7y agoThe closest thing I know is Firefox Focus, but I think it's mobile only.
- seba_dos1 7y ago"Track THIS will open A LOT of tabs. 100 tabs is a lot." Hah, funny. Maybe on Chromium, where it would already go into swapping hell on my 8GB RAM. However, on Firefox this is rather low - I'm on ~150 right now and that's just because I have cleaned all open tabs a few days ago (it was above 1000 before).
- tetraca 7y agoI don't know how this is possible to deal with. Once I accumulate 15-20 tabs in my tab tree I start closing the ones I won't return to, and I restart my browser and in the morning I empty my tab list from yesterday.
- lunchables 7y agoHow do you use 1,000 tabs?
- seba_dos1 7y agoWith tabs on the side. Some of them are clearly forgotten, waiting for the next whole-window-cleanup, but there are groups of tabs I revisit. Some people organize their tabs into trees; there was also "panorama" feature in the past; however, for me it seems like a scrollbar (with a filtering search bar) is enough. Also, the awesomebar itself has excellent support for switching between open tabs.
- NullPrefix 7y agoThis does not really work if you multi monitor, because that way you get separate trees for each window. Or is there a plugin that gives the same tree in multiple windows?
- seba_dos1 7y agoDunno, I don't use any trees - just a list of tabs on the side (Tab Center Redux). I usually use the browser only on one monitor while having something else on the other, and even if I do have two windows, this doesn't seem to be a problem for me in practice.
- user17843 7y agoI think it would be more constructive it Firefox would include a better visualization of the extend of web tracking. Mozilla had already tried something like this with an extension, it's called "Firefox Lightbeam". With the next Firefox version, statistics about the number of trackers blocked will be included in Firefox, and I think a better version of Lightbeam (more lightweight, visually showing the difference between tracking protection on/off and excluding subdomains) should be included as well.
- blablabla123 7y agoOf course this works but won't solve the root cause and won't be applicable to the real world in which tracking also becomes more present. For the time being an ad blocker seems more useful, also I'd be happy to still use certain features of my browser like the history function. ;) Also I think there is anyway a trend towards less ads. Those who push out most ads - probably online magazines - are changing more to paid subscriptions.
- wedn3sday 7y agoThe problem with this is that I picked the "Prepper" profile, and then it just opened a bunch of pages with cool outdoor gear that I kind of wanted. Upside hopefully now I get ads for REI I guess?
- miguelmota 7y agoIs it broken? I tried it out and it only opened up 2 tabs to random news articles.. EDIT: nevermind, you have to go back and visit the Track This tab to have it open up more tabs.
- nerdponx 7y agoI don't think this does what you think it does. This confuses the algorithms temporarily into thinking that your tastes have changed. They still know who you are. Your devices and browsers are fingerprinted. Your home network is in a database. Your mobile carrier is selling your location data. Your IP address doesn't change that often. Etc. Plus, you know there are already multiple teams tasked with filtering out "fake clicks". They probably are already doing it, assuming that multiple users are sharing a machine or something like that.
- m463 7y agoI would like to block Canvas Extraction, but it seems to allow it on every website I visit, and I have to click on the icon in the address bar and turn it off.. late.
- bradezone 7y agoMozilla is on fire lately, this is Trump level trolling & I love it