5 ms·

Tools To Help You Hide Online Raise The Ire Of Advertisers

49 points by iProject 13y ago

lwhalen 13y ago
May I be the first to say, "tough cookies" (pun fully intended) to their ire :-) My browser, my rules. If advertisers want to sell me something, they can find a less-underhanded way to do it than tracking my every mouse-click.
- namank 13y ago
  But it's not your browser. Some kind people have created one for you. Should they not explore potential avenues of revenue? (what if advertisers pay browser makers 1% of their earnings via this cookie tracking thing?)
  - hnha 13y ago
    Then I would simply use another browser that does not spy on its users. Thankfully we can install any software on our computers and even write our own.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - icebraining 13y ago
    But it's not your browser. Some kind people have created one for you. Should they not explore potential avenues of revenue? They should only explore avenues of revenue that don't depend on spying on users. Offering a browser for free doesn't excuse such actions.
    - namank 13y ago
      I agree. But for the sake of argument, why? "Big data" is huge an expected to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. This is just another form of big data.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        "Big data" is huge an expected to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. Well, there's plenty of things expected to grow, that doesn't make them necessarily good. Pollution levels are expected to grow as well, that doesn't mean it's OK to pollute. This is just another form of big data. I disagree with that. Some forms of big data violate people's privacy, other forms don't; we can't judge them all equally.
        namank 13y ago
        Oh right, because everything not relevant to the context of the situation must be dragged in to the discussion, right? Big data is the umbrella term and just throwing the term around signifies an understanding of analytics; the main reason for collecting all kinds of random data. It can't be judged equally but then who is responsible for judging it?
  - sdfjkl 13y ago
    Worse, the advertisers have made their own browser and it's pretty popular. "Not signed in to Chrome (You're missing out -- sign in)" Now they don't even need tracking cookies anymore.
    - csense 13y ago
      Chrome's open-source. If there's tracking stuff in there, why doesn't somebody fork the code and delete that part?
      - sdfjkl 13y ago
        There's no need for "tracking stuff". You get users to hand over data willingly by making it a useful/convenient feature, at least to some. In this case, simply let users sync their everything[1] to your servers. Now you can do whatever you want with this information. [1] Browsing history, bookmarks, saved passwords, form autofill data, see https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277
- mikegioia 13y ago
  Exactly. I don't understand how any advertiser could think they can control what I allow on my own computer. No-tracking is not the same as no-advertising. You can block the tracking while still viewing display ads. I mean, the television industry has gotten by just fine with little to no user-tracking for their advertisements. They show ads based on the demographics that networks provide them.
pvdm 13y ago
"commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets". - Chomsky
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Zzzz. Advertising is an element of monopolistic competition between goods that are imperfect substitutes for each other. Perfect competition can exist only in markets for fungible products. I mean, I'm no fan of advertising, but what does St. Noam expect - that manufacturers should abstain from advocacy of their own products? Of course bigger ones spend more money on advertising - but then they also invest more heavily in stock and production lines, and have a correspondingly greater need to recover their investment. By this logic, musicians should be required to wear uniforms and perform in the dark, since all that visual spectacle is just an effort to undermine listeners' acoustic perceptions.
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    Hes not stating anything of the sort, and you just built a ridiculous strawman. He is simply warning of the nature of advertisement, and the moral hazard inherent to it. Being aware of stuff like this is real empowerment.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      Yes he is. He says advertising is an attempt to undermine markets; there's an implicit corollary that markets operate more efficiently absent any advertising. Perfect competition and monopolistic competition are terms with specific meanings in economics, and Chomsky is asserting that they are isomorphic, which is not the case. I'm simply pointing out the absurdity of his argument by applying it to a market for goods that are not fungible - the work of competing musical artists, whose output is not easily substitutable for that of their competitors. Being aware of stuff like this is, in my view, even more empowering. The idea that advertising panders to its readers in order to shift their preferences is so obvious as to be trite. In fact, Chomsky's habit of doing this to his own readers is one reason that I dislike him so intensely. I suggest you try Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media as a contrast to Chomsky's brand of polemic.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hnha 13y ago
"hide online" is some nasty implied shady active process of behaving like it is something bad while in reality people are just putting a stop to being tracked mostly unknowingly and (i am missing the word, advertisers aim to exploit people, making them spend money on things, that's evil).
- derleth 13y ago
  > in reality people are just putting a stop to being tracked mostly unknowingly and (i am missing the word, advertisers aim to exploit people, making them spend money on things, that's evil). Wow. I don't think English has a single word for the concept you put in parentheses. I doubt any other language does, either. The best way I can rephrase the part I quoted into an English sentence is this: "In reality, people are just putting a stop to being manipulated and unknowingly tracked." Context has to determine precisely what 'manipulated' means here.
bsaul 13y ago
People always forget that something tracking companies can always do is simply ask their customer to create a dns subdomain that forward to their ip adress. Then all your browser see is a first party cookie, but it actually sends information to the third party. That's already what omniture is doing, and having a strong policy against third parties will only make others do the same.
- salmonellaeater 13y ago
  At that point it becomes a question of whether browsers can be uniquely identified so they can be tracked across sites. If the advertiser can place a cookie from site A and a cookie from site B, they don't have a way to link them unless the browser is unique. Users who care about privacy are going to have to defeat browser fingerprinting[1]. [1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- troels 13y ago
  That's clever - I hadn't thought of that. But then I suppose we could maintain a list of IP's of known trackers and block on that level.
beloch 13y ago
This reminds me of the MPAA and the formation of the hollywood "production code". In the late twenties there was pressure from the american public to reign in what could be shown in movies. Hollywood was absolutely terrified of what might happen if the government listened and imposed regulation on their industry, so they adopted the code to make that unnecessary. Movies that didn't obey the code were locked out of theaters, so the code was obeyed. Hollywood, not Washington, decided what the code was. In the end, the code died without any pricey court challenges or lobbying. Hollywood just abandoned it when american society became more permissive. The "Do Not Track" flag is similar to the late-twenties public outcry against the content of movies. The difference is, the ad industry totally failed to act on it. Instead, their tracking only grew more invasive. Now, they pay for their hubris. They didn't regulate themselves to meet public demand, so the public has demanded that regulations be imposed on them. There's no international government of the internet however, so in comes Mozilla. It's still a thoroughly democratic process however, since people can vote with their choice of browser and not opting out of the cookie tracker. If the ad industry were to act fast and make a big show of respecting "Do not track" flags and find ways to enforce this policy amongst their peers, this might remove the allure of cookie white-lists. Honestly though, I have no idea how they'd manage to do that, let alone fast. If the ship hasn't sailed just yet, it's certainly cast off the last line. Moral of the story: The public will get what it wants. If they want you restrained, either do it yourself of watch somebody else do it.
- junto 13y ago
  I'd like to add to story that shows just how intrusive some of this advertising has become. Last week I searched for flights on skyscanner.net from 'place A to place B'. Yesterday I was reading the Guardian online, and wham, there is a big advert stating "book now to fly to 'place A to place B', from 224 GBP". Advertising is starting to get so personal that I have started to balk against it on principle. There is just no way I will click on that advert, ever, sorry.
  - evgen 13y ago
    And this is new to you? Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have been seeing personalized ad retargeting like this for the past few years and not even noticing. The ad is going to get more and more personal because that is what makes it effective. If you choose to opt-out then expect to see more ads and ones that are of the spray-and-pray variety.
sdfjkl 13y ago
Good. That means we're doing it right.
anonymous 13y ago
Personally, I've taken a blunt-force approach to removing advertising from my web and have put http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ in my /etc/hosts.

49 points by iProject 13y ago

May I be the first to say, "tough cookies" (pun fully intended) to their ire :-) My browser, my rules. If advertisers want to sell me something, they can find a less-underhanded way to do it than tracking my every mouse-click.

namank 13y ago
But it's not your browser. Some kind people have created one for you. Should they not explore potential avenues of revenue? (what if advertisers pay browser makers 1% of their earnings via this cookie tracking thing?)
- hnha 13y ago
  Then I would simply use another browser that does not spy on its users. Thankfully we can install any software on our computers and even write our own.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- icebraining 13y ago
  But it's not your browser. Some kind people have created one for you. Should they not explore potential avenues of revenue? They should only explore avenues of revenue that don't depend on spying on users. Offering a browser for free doesn't excuse such actions.
  - namank 13y ago
    I agree. But for the sake of argument, why? "Big data" is huge an expected to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. This is just another form of big data.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      "Big data" is huge an expected to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. Well, there's plenty of things expected to grow, that doesn't make them necessarily good. Pollution levels are expected to grow as well, that doesn't mean it's OK to pollute. This is just another form of big data. I disagree with that. Some forms of big data violate people's privacy, other forms don't; we can't judge them all equally.
      - namank 13y ago
        Oh right, because everything not relevant to the context of the situation must be dragged in to the discussion, right? Big data is the umbrella term and just throwing the term around signifies an understanding of analytics; the main reason for collecting all kinds of random data. It can't be judged equally but then who is responsible for judging it?
- sdfjkl 13y ago
  Worse, the advertisers have made their own browser and it's pretty popular. "Not signed in to Chrome (You're missing out -- sign in)" Now they don't even need tracking cookies anymore.
  - csense 13y ago
    Chrome's open-source. If there's tracking stuff in there, why doesn't somebody fork the code and delete that part?
    - sdfjkl 13y ago
      There's no need for "tracking stuff". You get users to hand over data willingly by making it a useful/convenient feature, at least to some. In this case, simply let users sync their everything[1] to your servers. Now you can do whatever you want with this information. [1] Browsing history, bookmarks, saved passwords, form autofill data, see https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277 https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277
mikegioia 13y ago
Exactly. I don't understand how any advertiser could think they can control what I allow on my own computer. No-tracking is not the same as no-advertising. You can block the tracking while still viewing display ads. I mean, the television industry has gotten by just fine with little to no user-tracking for their advertisements. They show ads based on the demographics that networks provide them.

pvdm 13y ago

"commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets". - Chomsky

anigbrowl 13y ago
Zzzz. Advertising is an element of monopolistic competition between goods that are imperfect substitutes for each other. Perfect competition can exist only in markets for fungible products. I mean, I'm no fan of advertising, but what does St. Noam expect - that manufacturers should abstain from advocacy of their own products? Of course bigger ones spend more money on advertising - but then they also invest more heavily in stock and production lines, and have a correspondingly greater need to recover their investment. By this logic, musicians should be required to wear uniforms and perform in the dark, since all that visual spectacle is just an effort to undermine listeners' acoustic perceptions.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  Hes not stating anything of the sort, and you just built a ridiculous strawman. He is simply warning of the nature of advertisement, and the moral hazard inherent to it. Being aware of stuff like this is real empowerment.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Yes he is. He says advertising is an attempt to undermine markets; there's an implicit corollary that markets operate more efficiently absent any advertising. Perfect competition and monopolistic competition are terms with specific meanings in economics, and Chomsky is asserting that they are isomorphic, which is not the case. I'm simply pointing out the absurdity of his argument by applying it to a market for goods that are not fungible - the work of competing musical artists, whose output is not easily substitutable for that of their competitors. Being aware of stuff like this is, in my view, even more empowering. The idea that advertising panders to its readers in order to shift their preferences is so obvious as to be trite. In fact, Chomsky's habit of doing this to his own readers is one reason that I dislike him so intensely. I suggest you try Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media as a contrast to Chomsky's brand of polemic.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hnha 13y ago

"hide online" is some nasty implied shady active process of behaving like it is something bad while in reality people are just putting a stop to being tracked mostly unknowingly and (i am missing the word, advertisers aim to exploit people, making them spend money on things, that's evil).

derleth 13y ago
> in reality people are just putting a stop to being tracked mostly unknowingly and (i am missing the word, advertisers aim to exploit people, making them spend money on things, that's evil). Wow. I don't think English has a single word for the concept you put in parentheses. I doubt any other language does, either. The best way I can rephrase the part I quoted into an English sentence is this: "In reality, people are just putting a stop to being manipulated and unknowingly tracked." Context has to determine precisely what 'manipulated' means here.

bsaul 13y ago

People always forget that something tracking companies can always do is simply ask their customer to create a dns subdomain that forward to their ip adress. Then all your browser see is a first party cookie, but it actually sends information to the third party. That's already what omniture is doing, and having a strong policy against third parties will only make others do the same.

salmonellaeater 13y ago
At that point it becomes a question of whether browsers can be uniquely identified so they can be tracked across sites. If the advertiser can place a cookie from site A and a cookie from site B, they don't have a way to link them unless the browser is unique. Users who care about privacy are going to have to defeat browser fingerprinting[1]. [1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
troels 13y ago
That's clever - I hadn't thought of that. But then I suppose we could maintain a list of IP's of known trackers and block on that level.

beloch 13y ago

This reminds me of the MPAA and the formation of the hollywood "production code". In the late twenties there was pressure from the american public to reign in what could be shown in movies. Hollywood was absolutely terrified of what might happen if the government listened and imposed regulation on their industry, so they adopted the code to make that unnecessary. Movies that didn't obey the code were locked out of theaters, so the code was obeyed. Hollywood, not Washington, decided what the code was. In the end, the code died without any pricey court challenges or lobbying. Hollywood just abandoned it when american society became more permissive. The "Do Not Track" flag is similar to the late-twenties public outcry against the content of movies. The difference is, the ad industry totally failed to act on it. Instead, their tracking only grew more invasive. Now, they pay for their hubris. They didn't regulate themselves to meet public demand, so the public has demanded that regulations be imposed on them. There's no international government of the internet however, so in comes Mozilla. It's still a thoroughly democratic process however, since people can vote with their choice of browser and not opting out of the cookie tracker. If the ad industry were to act fast and make a big show of respecting "Do not track" flags and find ways to enforce this policy amongst their peers, this might remove the allure of cookie white-lists. Honestly though, I have no idea how they'd manage to do that, let alone fast. If the ship hasn't sailed just yet, it's certainly cast off the last line. Moral of the story: The public will get what it wants. If they want you restrained, either do it yourself of watch somebody else do it.

junto 13y ago
I'd like to add to story that shows just how intrusive some of this advertising has become. Last week I searched for flights on skyscanner.net from 'place A to place B'. Yesterday I was reading the Guardian online, and wham, there is a big advert stating "book now to fly to 'place A to place B', from 224 GBP". Advertising is starting to get so personal that I have started to balk against it on principle. There is just no way I will click on that advert, ever, sorry.
- evgen 13y ago
  And this is new to you? Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have been seeing personalized ad retargeting like this for the past few years and not even noticing. The ad is going to get more and more personal because that is what makes it effective. If you choose to opt-out then expect to see more ads and ones that are of the spray-and-pray variety.

sdfjkl 13y ago

Good. That means we're doing it right.

anonymous 13y ago

Personally, I've taken a blunt-force approach to removing advertising from my web and have put http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ in my /etc/hosts.