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No, Safari 14 does not block Google Analytics
- TomAnthony 6y agoThe two articles that are discussed in this post have both been featured on HN in the last 24 hours [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23629918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23629918 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612140
- dang 6y agoWe've merged those. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612140 is the thread.
- saagarjha 6y ago> I'm disappointed that the Privacy Report has such clumsy wording. To use terms like block, prevent, and tracker can lead to confusion, as the aftermath of WWDC showed, unless they are clearly defined in the report itself. Yeah, this part really needs some cleaning up. It's hard to explain exactly how ITP works, but it is important to note that Safari is not trying to block the tracker from loading but instead detect its ability to track you and take appropriate action.
- geerlingguy 6y agoNot much to contribute to the conversation (other than I would be happy if something like Pi Hole were built into my computer directly), but I find it interesting how frequently the top 5-10 stories on HN are basically top level responses or refutations to stories that were in the top 5-10 earlier in the day. I have to admit that I ended up in this situation with one of my posts earlier this year—I just find it interesting that it seems to be happening more frequently lately.
- lostgame 6y agoWe truly are living in an area where the lines between truth and marketing are very slim.
- nix23 6y agoNo problem, just use unbound and a blocklist: https://www.tumfatig.net/20190405/blocking-ads-using-unbound8-on-openbsd/ https://www.tumfatig.net/20190405/blocking-ads-using-unbound...
- dang 6y agoIt may have been happening more frequently but the overwhelming reason for such things is randomness. It's just also the most boring reason.
- xrisk 6y agoNextDNS does basically the same thing and is pretty easy to use.
- mynameisvlad 6y agoThis. Someone else is hosting it which to some is a pro while others is a con, but it's been great at replacing my finnicky pihole instance, and supports DoH and DoT natively.
- t0mas88 6y agoThe author is very naive on what Google Analytics does: > That doesn't mean there might not be cookies set on google-analytics.com. I would imagine there are some that are used for debugging and monitoring purposes, for example. Google links GA data to their DoubleClick and Adwords cookies. So it's not just "debugging", they're collecting data and using it to create audiences in Adwords and the DoubleClick products. As a user it's only available if you pay for Analytics 360, but Google gets the data either way even if you don't get to use it.
- TomAnthony 6y agoI think you have misunderstood what he is saying with that sentence. He is not speaking about "GA data", but is discussing the very precise issue of whether HTTP 3rd party cookies, set on cross-domain requests to google-analytics.com, being blocked has an impact on the the functionality of GA. Those cookies being in contrast to 1st party cookies set by GA's javascript code.
- t0mas88 6y agoNo, he is using this example; "I would imagine there are some that are used for debugging and monitoring purposes, for example." While he knows full well that GA uses third party cookies to support their audience creation features, not "debugging and monitoring". And from the other comments it sounds like he did that on purpose because he has a vested interest in GA.
- SimoAhava 6y agoYes, Google uses third-party cookies to support building cross-site profiles of users. This is an opt-in feature via GA admin, where the settings for the property require "Advertising Features" to be enabled. This can also be controlled on tracker- and tag-level on the site itself. What you're misunderstanding is that google-analytics.com doesn't leverage this behavior. The third-party cookies are written on doubleclick.net, to which GA's analytics.js library sends a payload of data if advertising features have been enabled. So everything I wrote in the article stands. google-analytics.com is not being used for cross-site tracking. Any third-party cookies written on that domain are not involved in either first-party tracking by analytics.js, or the audience building efforts by doubleclick.net. Your insults are completely unnecessary, especially when they're based on a complete misunderstanding of how Google's advertising and analytics stack works.
- m463 6y agothere is SO much stuff that safari doesn't block. Get firefox + umatrix and just see how much stuff goes on.
- arkitaip 6y agoFirefox on Windows has the same problem with it's Enhanced Tracking Protection. I've just decided to disable it all together* and just use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. * Actually, you can't just disable it. You have to select the "custom" preset and then disable all the "protections".
- beervirus 6y agoWhat's the problem with enhanced tracking protection?
- Nextgrid 6y agoIt's a fraud. It's got an explicit whitelist of domains to allow, and those include both Google and Facebook.
- SimoAhava 6y agoNot quite. ETP blocks access to third-party storage from .doubleclick.net, .google.com, and any other source in the Disconnect.me list. You can easily verify this by visiting a site that runs Google's remarketing tags, and see the console messages and the missing "Cookie" headers from cross-site requests to these domains. ETP doesn't block resource loads by default, unless they are known fingerprinting libraries or cryptomining sources. Only in Strict / Private Windows ETP mode is content actually being blocked, and in those cases most Google services won't work at all (as the domains have been blocklisted). Facebook doesn't generally leverage third-party cookies anymore, as it uses the &fbclid parameter to enable first-party cross-site tracking. Thus ETP is somewhat weaponless against this behavior (except in Strict / Private Windows mode) because, as stated above, ETP doesn't block resource loads in default mode.
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- tengbretson 6y agoNot sure what to make of this article, but I've become very distrustful of articles with titles that take the form: "No, <thing being said by a group I want to smear> is not <doing thing>" At best it's patronizing, at worst it's used as cover for outright lying.
- TomAnthony 6y agoI take your point, but the phrasing makes sense here as it is refuting two recent articles that were making a strong (and verifiably incorrect claim).
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI'm go glad I'm not the only one.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- masswerk 6y agoThis (the reports this article is answering to) is really a good example for the state of information and information spread on the Web. It does not just start with "fake news" and manipulative messages, it' really about this kind of reporting, which is setting the standards – and it's mostly down-hill beyond those outlets. (This isn't specific to any domain or topic. Journalistic standards are mostly down to where they have been in the 1920s, with most of the lessons learned forgotten.)
- dx034 6y agoTo be fair, I'd blame Apple more than people spreading it here. When I watched the keynote I also immediately thought they block GA.
- shawkinaw 6y agoIronically: https://ibb.co/NFvkbxw https://ibb.co/NFvkbxw
- KorfmannArno 6y ago"uses on-device machine learning to identify trackers"
- stonogo 6y agoWhy not?
- romanovcode 6y agoNot brave enough
- PostThisTooFast 6y agoIf only they could remove the screen, as they did the headphone jack. Courage (tm)
- egypturnash 6y agoRealistically, it probably should.
- aloukissas 6y agoBummer. It looks like I won't be giving up Brave for a while, since it blocks GA and every other tracker.
- kingo55 6y agoNot entirely correct, Brave allows its own (and others') first party trackers. I'd suggest using ublock origin for greater control. https://twitter.com/BraveSampson/status/1266034313142861824?s=19 https://twitter.com/BraveSampson/status/1266034313142861824?...
- Shared404 6y agoBrave isn't particularly trustworthy. Here's one example [1]. I've been using firefox with Privacy Badger and NoScript. [1] https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect
- systemvoltage 6y agoThe whole Brave thing reeks of shadiness.
- chunsj 6y agoSad if this article says true. I want every tracking (including analytics things) to be disabled.
- not2b 6y agoThis sounds similar to the EFF's Privacy Badger, though someone who knows more of the details could give a better comparison than I could.
- cactus2093 6y agoI think privacy badger actually does block google analytics though
- not2b 6y agoAh. When I first started using PB it didn't block Google Analytics, apparently that changed about a year ago according to https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/sharpening-our-claws-teaching-privacy-badger-fight-more-third-party-trackers https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/sharpening-our-claws-t...
- chickenlottie 6y ago> But for now, Google Analytics users don't need to worry about Safari That’s too bad. Wish apple had the guts to stand up and do the right thing for end-users.
- dx034 6y agoI believe Google Analytics without enhanced tracking is a net benefit. The information on how many users visit and how they use the site is incredibly helpful. The problem with Google Analytics is that Google tracks are lot more than they need to and use it for their own benefit as well. Safari seems to mostly prevent that now.
- Nextgrid 6y ago> Safari seems to mostly prevent that now. [citation needed] The IP address & user-agent combination alone is enough to track a home user (whose IP doesn't change that often) with a high degree of accuracy, and even more so if you happen to be logged into a Google account in another tab/browser which will allow them to attribute any new IPs to you.
- ec109685 6y agoThe happened to be logged into google use case is blocked by safari since third party cookies aren’t sent to google.
- Nextgrid 6y agoI was saying that being logged-in in one tab would let Google know of any new IP that you would be using, which would in turn allow them to attribute non-logged-in traffic from other tabs because they now know your new IP.
- risyachka 6y agoIt should block sensitive data, but obviously not full service. If they start blocking services who said yours won't be next? It's like google and blocking websites when they want. You just can't do that because it's wrong in so many ways. You can't make a great product without analytics (in vast majority of cases). It just should collect only required data for improving product, not marketing purposes. If you start blocking all analytics then expect that you will have to use garbage products.
- gtufano 6y agoI don't really know, but I can assure you we had great products before Google Analytics existed and, fwiw, an advertising industry existed before tracking.
- saagarjha 6y agoITP blocks analytics that have cross-domain tracking abilities, not "all analytics".
- Nextgrid 6y ago> If you start blocking all analytics then expect that you will have to use garbage products. The whole analytics/spyware era properly started in the last decade, and the last decade is surprisingly also when most software started going to shit, like Windows 10, iOS or even macOS. I'm not convinced that analytics leads to better software in any way, and all the information I've got so far leads me to believe the opposite.
- risyachka 6y agoThe fact they went to shit has nothing to do with analytics. Analytics is just a tool. Like any other it can be used for bad or for good. Just like a hammer.
- mytherin 6y ago> The fact they went to shit has nothing to do with analytics. Perhaps, perhaps not. Analytics can definitely guide developers along the wrong path. A typical example is that it leads to simplification to cater to 80% of their userbase at the expense of the power users. After all, analytics tells us all these extensive options are only used by 20% of the people, why offer them at all? But then the power users become frustrated and leave, and the remaining 80% who were mostly beginners on their way to becoming power users now find that the software lacks the in-depth options they needed later on. Then they don't stick around either because you just gutted your own product. I agree with you that analytics is a tool; it can be useful, but often it is not and often it hurts more than it helps. I also claim that it is definitely not essential to modern software development.
- PostThisTooFast 6y agoYes, mobile Safari crashes every few minutes. It’s useless junk, and Apple bans all alternatives in iOS. Apple is anti-customer scum.