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Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On
- amarcheschi 2y agoDoes anybody know how this compares with other "similar" privacy extensions?
- rchaud 2y agoThis just opts you out of GA. There are a million other scripts running on most websites, like Adobe Analytics, Meta Pixel, Microsoft Clarity, etc.
- yesbut 2y agoWe already have uBlock origin for this.
- zgeor 2y agoIs uBlock working with the latest Chrome version? Mine got disabled automatically, and I had tonmove to uBlock lite
- Tepix 2y agoWhy not switch to another browser instead that doesn't violate your privacy?
- bolognafairy 2y ago[dead]
- zgeor 2y agoFirefox has been my main driver for many years, but I still have to use Chrome from time to time
- Tepix 2y agoI'm using Brave for those occasions
- eu 2y agoyou could simply enable it back.
- nickthegreek 2y agofor a limited time.
- knowitnone 2y agono you can't. and even if you keep it, it's not going to run.
- bhhaskin 2y agoThis is just a way for Google to go "See! They aren't using the add-on. They are giving us consent to sell their data!"
- mrweasel 2y agoGoogle, and so many others, failed to do the logical check: If this was off by default, would users enable it? If not, then it doesn't need to be a feature. If the domain wasn't google.com, this would look like a fairly sketchy click. At least for Firefox, this isn't a link to an add-on, rather it's a download. While I understand that no everything in addons.mozilla.org is to be trusted, I don't think it's a good idea to train people to install random things they download from weird looking random pages online.
- idle_zealot 2y ago> Google, and so many others, failed to do the logical check: If this was off by default, would users enable it? If not, then it doesn't need to be a feature. You fundamentally misunderstand the forces at play if you think this is a failure on their part. They are incentivized financially to be user hostile. There is no magical moral compass embedded within the market that rewards those who make product decisions based on what people want, or what's good for them. They're an ads and tracking company. Approximately nobody would opt-in to their dragnet. Their whole operation is using free services as bait to track and manipulate as many aspects of human life as possible. There is no meeting where someone internally might say "hey, what do you think the user wants, what's best for them?" It's "we want the users to feel/do X, how do we get them there?"
- mrweasel 2y ago> You fundamentally misunderstand the forces at play Sadly I do understand, I just don't want to.
- wartijn_ 2y agoThat logical check only makes sense if you assume that the users of Google analytics are people visiting websites. But that’s obviously not the case here Google Analytics is added a website by whoever runs that website, and they very much did enable it.
- RamRodification 2y agoThe Do-not-track setting (header) was just too darn inconvenient to use /s
- hedora 2y agoDon’t you mean RFC-35140? https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/ https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/
- RamRodification 2y agoWow that was great. Thanks.
- Animats 2y agoDoes this prevent Google Analytics from working, or does it tell Google that you don't want Google Analytics. There's a difference. Most sites work with googletagmanager.com blocked. Privacy Badger will block it if you ask, although it gives you a warning that some sites may break. Generally not ones you really need.
- fwn 2y agoIt does (function() { var a = document.createElement("script"); a.type = "text/javascript"; a.id = "__gaOptOutExtension"; a.innerText = 'window["_gaUserPrefs"] = { ioo : function() { return true; } }'; document.documentElement.insertBefore(a, document.documentElement.firstChild); })() here "matches": [ "http://*/*", "https://*/*" ]
- zaruvi 2y agoThanks for checking! Stealing this and adding it to my global userscript, just in case ublock doesn't catch the download.
- hedora 2y agoUnless I’m misreading the code, it looks like it’s running GA, but giving it an opt-out signal to harvest.
- SahAssar 2y agoIt's not, It's adding a global variable called _gaUserPrefs to every site. If the actual GA script is loaded it would look for this as the opt-out signal. Of course any other tracking (or GA tracking) could use this as a part of fingerprinting.
- Animats 2y agoAh. So there is a "trust us" aspect to this.
- pacifika 2y agoI think that is a 20 year old page and I would test to see if it actually works. Eero just blocks the domains afaik.
- sunaookami 2y agoI thought so too because the design is very old but the addon actually uses Manifest v3 which is new. So it's still maintained.
- HelloUsername 2y agoPrevious discussions: 24-sept-2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37636447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37636447 34 comments 16-dec-2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25439834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25439834 172 comments 25-mar-2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19479809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19479809 41 comments
- Havoc 2y agoNormalizing that invasive tracking is opt out while making opt out of their shenanigans intentionally hard (manufest3) Do Be Evil
- hedora 2y agoNot hard; impossible. They gather data from non online services, app malware, logged out browsers, etc, etc. How do I opt those things out? I’ve long thought we need a way to run sybil attacks against trackers, with the goal that all the numbers and statistics these things produce would be off by at least an order of magnitude (in both directions, at random).
- Larrikin 2y agoRun Ad Nauseum instead of plain uBlock Origin. The websites get clicks on their ads, you still don't see any ads, and you poison your ad profile. Everybody wins.
- SahAssar 2y agoExcept you since that does not fix privacy concerns. And the website since the value per click/view gets lowered. And you again since the ad-companies will try to develop methods to discern what is a real click vs what is not and that makes privacy worse. And the advertiser since they won't know what ads are effective. And the ad-companies since they now need to spend time/money on fake clicks. Oh wait, seems like nobody wins?
- MattTheRealOne 2y agoJust a reminder that extensions can be used to fingerprint your browser, so installing this makes you more unique and easier to track. It is recommended to keep browser extensions to a minimum. uBlock Origin, as well as many other ad blockers, can already do this making this extension redundant.
- rchaud 2y agoI had this when it was called UBO.
- knowitnone 2y agoso their Add-on will keep track of you instead and do a better job at it
- smjburton 2y agoWouldn't using Pi-hole or Adguard work in this case without the need to install a browser extension? These solutions are also more comprehensive because they block Google Analytics for all devices throughout a network.
- knappe 2y agoMostly. I run a pihole and it blocks most traffic, but of course it depends on updates to the denylist to keep up to date on what to block. uBlock helps here, but uBlock doesn't run in chrome now.
- lazyeye 2y agoI'm going to assume this is a way for Google to track you in every other way except via Analytics. "Hide your evil"
- 486sx33 2y agoOpt-out add-on Makes me say, f** you