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I find their "removing 3rd party cookies will incentivise businesses to rely on fingerprinting" discourse dangerous. It implies that other browser vendors (Moz

I find their "removing 3rd party cookies will incentivise businesses to rely on fingerprinting" discourse dangerous. It implies that other browser vendors (Mozilla, Safari/WebKit, new Edge) are in fact making the Web a more dangerous place. I believe it's dangerous because it creates a harmful, unproductive PR narrative—people might just assume this is a true statement, without learning about both sides of the problem. I'm not trying to strip anyone of agency, I just don't think most of my friends would have time to research this topic and might decide to follow the main opinion instead. The answer I'd like to hear: Yes, it does push some actors towards fingerprinting, but preventing fingerprinting should be dealt with regardless. Changes should happen both on legislative and browser-vendor level. > But it is clear for me how all this anti-thirdparty cookies situation will go further: server side third party ad trackers -- this will bypass Same Origin Policy and will pose a privacy and security threat for users and websites even more than todays third party frontend ad trackers. Server-side as well as white-labelled (subdomain) integrations already exist. Lotame (DMP) has at least one product of this kind, afaik.

sroussey 7y ago
15-20 years ago, we found that people that were aggressive online and harassing people often cleared their cookies too. That constant clearing of cookies had us look into using flash to hold cookies, since that data didn't really get deleted when you cleared your cookies in the browser. So there is something to be said about that issue. That said, Apple/Mozilla/etc know this and so they are simultaneously trying to make fingerprinting more difficult. If they were not, I would agree with Google's stance. But since they are, it is really more of a footnote.
- SilasX 7y ago
  I remember in the days of MSN gaming zone (zone.com, c. 1999), I was a vicious troll, and I'm pretty sure MS used their control of the OS to enforce a machine ban, as every attempt to use it from my home desktop was blocked. Also, somewhere in the Windows system registry I found a list of all the screen names I used.
- qbaqbaqba 7y ago
  > 15-20 years ago, we found that people that were aggressive online and harassing people often cleared their cookies too. You forgot to mention them abusing children and planing terror attacks.
  - sroussey 7y ago
    Acting like children, sure. No terror stuff, but plenty of anti-Semitic material.
- eitland 7y ago
  > 15-20 years ago, we found that people that were aggressive online and harassing people often cleared their cookies too. This might very well be true for what I know, but the general idea that optional privacy leads to more hostile environments seems to have been conclusively destroyed by HN and certain other forums, especially when compared to Facebook.
  - sroussey 7y ago
    We had a million communities, and learned a lot about how people act and react. Trolls, spammers, and people with some severe mental problems. FB is interesting in that you would think that it would inhibit all bad behavior since you are using a real name. But really, people don’t care quite so much. Much improved though! Well, except for the bots, hacked accounts, and bad actors. From the standpoint of dealing with crap messages, there are no silver bullets. But there are tools. Not everyone knows how to snowshoe, so you can have a decent win with even simple blocks.
stubish 7y ago
I also don't see what has changed if businesses using 3rd party cookies to identify and track users switch to fingerprinting to identify and track users. My privacy is still being invaded in exactly the same way. Forcing companies to fall back to more bizarre and costly tactics seems to be the only path to victory.
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  A big difference is that every browser provides easy-to-use native features to clear or block cookies--not true for fingerprinting. The complexity and opacity of how it works makes fingerprinting harder to block and clear.

sroussey 7y ago

15-20 years ago, we found that people that were aggressive online and harassing people often cleared their cookies too. That constant clearing of cookies had us look into using flash to hold cookies, since that data didn't really get deleted when you cleared your cookies in the browser. So there is something to be said about that issue. That said, Apple/Mozilla/etc know this and so they are simultaneously trying to make fingerprinting more difficult. If they were not, I would agree with Google's stance. But since they are, it is really more of a footnote.

SilasX 7y ago
I remember in the days of MSN gaming zone (zone.com, c. 1999), I was a vicious troll, and I'm pretty sure MS used their control of the OS to enforce a machine ban, as every attempt to use it from my home desktop was blocked. Also, somewhere in the Windows system registry I found a list of all the screen names I used.
qbaqbaqba 7y ago
> 15-20 years ago, we found that people that were aggressive online and harassing people often cleared their cookies too. You forgot to mention them abusing children and planing terror attacks.
- sroussey 7y ago
  Acting like children, sure. No terror stuff, but plenty of anti-Semitic material.
eitland 7y ago
> 15-20 years ago, we found that people that were aggressive online and harassing people often cleared their cookies too. This might very well be true for what I know, but the general idea that optional privacy leads to more hostile environments seems to have been conclusively destroyed by HN and certain other forums, especially when compared to Facebook.
- sroussey 7y ago
  We had a million communities, and learned a lot about how people act and react. Trolls, spammers, and people with some severe mental problems. FB is interesting in that you would think that it would inhibit all bad behavior since you are using a real name. But really, people don’t care quite so much. Much improved though! Well, except for the bots, hacked accounts, and bad actors. From the standpoint of dealing with crap messages, there are no silver bullets. But there are tools. Not everyone knows how to snowshoe, so you can have a decent win with even simple blocks.

stubish 7y ago

I also don't see what has changed if businesses using 3rd party cookies to identify and track users switch to fingerprinting to identify and track users. My privacy is still being invaded in exactly the same way. Forcing companies to fall back to more bizarre and costly tactics seems to be the only path to victory.

snowwrestler 7y ago
A big difference is that every browser provides easy-to-use native features to clear or block cookies--not true for fingerprinting. The complexity and opacity of how it works makes fingerprinting harder to block and clear.