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I feel inclined to say "... well yeah, obviously". Not in the "obvious in retrospect" way, but because browsers have been progressively blocking history-sniffi
by Groxx 6y ago
I feel inclined to say "... well yeah, obviously".
Not in the "obvious in retrospect" way, but because browsers have been progressively blocking history-sniffing tactics for years precisely because advertisers were using it to identify visitors.
Did this research... establish better numbers around it or something?
- godelski 6y ago> Did this research... establish better numbers around it or something? >> However, this time around, since the data was collected from Firefox itself and not through a web page performing a time-lengthy CSS test, the data was much more accurate and reliable. Furthermore, the data Mozilla researchers collected is also about the same type of data that today's online analytics companies also collect about users — either through data partnerships, mobile apps, online ads, or other mechanisms.
- dralley 6y agoNeeds to be specified that this was an opt-in study that you had to agree to.
- godelski 6y agoIs no one in this thread going to read this article? Seriously, it isn't that long. RTFM >> The new experiment got underway between July 16 and August 13, 2019, when Mozilla prompted Firefox users to take part of this experiment. >> Mozilla researchers said that more than 52,000 users agreed to take part and agreed to provide anonymous browsing data.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoClearly not actually anonymous browsing data in actuality though... which is why we should always take claims that telemetry data is anonymized with a grain of salt.
- tonyhb 6y agoAnonymous as in the only thing they're getting is a random identifier and browsing data.
- input_sh 6y agoWelcome to HN, where the majority reads nothing but the headline and discus how they feel about the headline.
- OskarS 6y agoThat's nothing to do with HN, that's just how the internet works.
- James_Henry 6y agoHN is on the internet, no? Also, HN definitely has a particularly bad headline-only problem, or maybe it just shows worse than some other places because people here have a tendency to ask really basic questions that the article clearly answers.
- godelski 6y agoI think the problem here is that HN has higher standards (and we should keep it that way). Reddit is far worse, but I don't want to deal with all the stupid there.
- James_Henry 6y agoDoes HN have higher standards? Maybe different standards, but I don't know that when it comes to reading the article that HN is much better than Reddit.
- gpvos 6y agoThe subtitle is "Just 50-150 of our favorite sites are enough." More numbers further on in the article, although not that many.
- RandoHolmes 6y agoIt also says 50-150 websites. I regularly visit maybe 5 or 6? The rest tend to be random links from reddit or HN, I wonder if visiting a site like that once and never again is enough to help with that identification. Another thought is I think it's obvious that if it's a site you log into and the URL has an identifier of some type then it's easy to identify you and that's why schemes to hide the URL could also be a privacy issue.