5 ms·

I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up w

by kgwxd 6y ago

I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up whatever optimizations the current silent behavior allows. I'm sure Google would do everything to stop that from ever being standard though.

zem 6y ago
this is unfortunately relatively easy to work around. if you want ad revenue you agree to host a third party's script on your own site, with a cron job to pull updates. then you collect tracking data, send it to your own backend, and upload it from there to google/facebook/whoever.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  That requires the site owner and the tracking network to build a trust relationship, which is how it should be. I don't want my machine to be an intermediary.
_-david-_ 6y ago
What would stop people using a CNAME record to point ads.example.com to a third party ad server? I don't think there would be a way to use cookies to track people across different sites, but the ad servers could still use ip addresses and browser fingerprinting to check if its the same user.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  PiHole and uBlock origin support so called “deep CNAME inspection” that defeats approaches like that.
  - blibble 6y ago
    pretty easy to defeat that CNAME inspection: switch to ANAMEs everything will end up pointing at some random AWS IP address, and you can't filter that
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Let us imagine that there are options to disable or exclude these "features", i.e., silent behaviours. Here is a question for you. Would you prefer that these options be a. only run-time (hopefully not set to defaults that suit advertising and tracking), b. only compile-time (imagining further that these browsers could be compiled with less resources and in less time), or c. both.

5 ms·

I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up w

by kgwxd 6y ago

zem 6y ago
this is unfortunately relatively easy to work around. if you want ad revenue you agree to host a third party's script on your own site, with a cron job to pull updates. then you collect tracking data, send it to your own backend, and upload it from there to google/facebook/whoever.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  That requires the site owner and the tracking network to build a trust relationship, which is how it should be. I don't want my machine to be an intermediary.
_-david-_ 6y ago
What would stop people using a CNAME record to point ads.example.com to a third party ad server? I don't think there would be a way to use cookies to track people across different sites, but the ad servers could still use ip addresses and browser fingerprinting to check if its the same user.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  PiHole and uBlock origin support so called “deep CNAME inspection” that defeats approaches like that.
  - blibble 6y ago
    pretty easy to defeat that CNAME inspection: switch to ANAMEs everything will end up pointing at some random AWS IP address, and you can't filter that
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Let us imagine that there are options to disable or exclude these "features", i.e., silent behaviours. Here is a question for you. Would you prefer that these options be a. only run-time (hopefully not set to defaults that suit advertising and tracking), b. only compile-time (imagining further that these browsers could be compiled with less resources and in less time), or c. both.