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Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts

• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• freakyterrorist 12y ago
  Great work. This facebook policy was absolutely disgusting.
• tech-no-logical 12y ago
  and to all site owners moaning about people using adblock : this is why we can't have nice things. as long as policies like this exist, I'll block anything remotely able to track me.
  • fchollet 12y ago
    It is very difficult to get somebody to understand something when they have some amount of income depending on not understanding it. Of course site owners are always going to stand behind the ad-supported model of the web, even though it creates all the wrong incentives for content creators and massively degrades the user experience. And generally, degrades the very value proposition of the web. (disclaimer: I run a 5k DAU social network with no ads).
    • tech-no-logical 12y ago
      true. but as long as site owners use ad-providers that track me, I don't really care. I will gladly reconsider my blocking ads if and when ad-providers are used that don't do this. maybe site-owners should pressure ad-providers to provide a track-free service ?
      • dspillett 12y ago
        The lower targeting potential reduces the value of the ad site as it is sold down the chain, so if the site owners are using the ads to fund themselves they are unlikely to as for this en-mass as it would reduce their income. Of course you could argue the moral and inconvenience cases as sites make these judgements when choosing advert networks already but "a bit of tracking" does not have the same moral weight to most as "porn and gambling" or "the annoyance of pop-ups/unders and drive-by install attempts" when deciding where they are comfortable to take money from.
        • mitchty 12y ago
          Then why don't the sites provide the same options that you get with some ios apps. Default is free with ads, otherwise pay a nominal fee to remove the ads. Without the latter the ads being compulsory is just enforcing advertising on your users without knowing if they even want it.
          • dspillett 12y ago
            Probably because it is more work in that environment. To accept payments for an ad-free version you need to create and maintain some sort of payment processing, and of course user authentication & session management. With iOS apps a lot of this is baked in. Also it is much easier (for a non-technical user at least) to just skip the ads on the web using browser plug-ins, than it is to get around them in an app, so to an extent this extra work may be wasted and the number of people who take up the "pay for no ads" option might not be enough to warrant the work that goes into maintaining it. There are some sites that offer the "ads or pay" option so it presumably works out worthwhile for some sites, but I've not seen it often.
    • GrinningFool 12y ago
      I will happily accept advertisements as long as they are self-hosted in a way that doesn't report back to any external entity. The problem [for me] is not the advertising as long as it's reasonably done (static, textual, non-invasive). It's the fact that every third party has their own behaviours, and I have no idea what any of them are. I instead must rely on the judgement of the person running the site - and most of them appear fairly unaware of the privacy implications associated with both advertisements and analytics services.
    • nfoz 12y ago
      At least part of the problem is that we, as a society, have no idea how to fund the development of creative / digital works. We can't find good business models for this in general. I agree that ad-supported is terrible. But how else? I'm hopeful for donation-crowdfunding and simple, liquid micropayment options online. But I don't know that that could significantly displace ads.
      • king_jester 12y ago
        > At least part of the problem is that we, as a society, have no idea how to fund the development of creative / digital works. We can't find good business models for this in general. Very true. This says something about how we as a society values those works and how our economic organization discourages some kinds of work/content.
  • Wicher 12y ago
    If it's the tracking you'd like to avoid, don't use ad blockers! They're the wrong tool for the job. They're for blocking ads. So they'll block ads that are not leaking your info (for your use case, a false positive) and will not (not necessarily) block other means by which you're being tracked (for your use case, a false negative). Use something like RequestPolicy (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...) or PrivacyBadger (https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger) instead. That way, you're not blocking ads per sé — though a side effect of using RequestPolicy is that you won't see much ads — you're blocking the leakage of information to third parties instead. Using blanket ad blocking sends the wrong signal to site owners, and creates little incentive to do the 'right thing' — it lets the "bad apples" (which I imagine to be something like 99% of the online ad businesses) spoil it for the one percent that does value your privacy, with no way for anyone to improve. Using ad blocking for privacy reasons is not completely effective (false negatives) and worse, it's punishing individuals for the behaviour of the flock. ========================================================= Edit: Found the perfect example of the false-positive and false-negative I'm talking about above: http://www.gentoo.org http://www.gentoo.org . Harmless ads — just images inside html <a> anchors, loaded from the domain in the site URL. Not leaking anything. The ads help an organization I support. So what does AdblockPlus do (default settings)? It blocks them. What does RequestPolicy do? It lets them through.
    • tech-no-logical 12y ago
      I tried requestpolicy, I found it too cumbersome to use. with adblock edge, I subscribe to 2 lists and I'm done. I'd try again if they adopt such a feature.
    • mp3geek 12y ago
      So don't use Adblock Plus because it works too well? And if theres false positives with either the Adblock or Tracking lists it comes with whitelists get around certain website bugs.
      • vertex-four 12y ago
        No, don't use Adblock Plus because it blocks the wrong thing (if you're actually wanting to protect your privacy vs just avoid ads). You want to avoid tracking, so you avoid ads... leaving all the other methods of tracking out there, and blocking ads which don't track you at all.
• dspillett 12y ago
  To minimise the tracking without plugins: always login to facebook and anything that has your personal details in a "private" session or a browser you don't normally use with flash turned off (or not installed in the first place). Not perfect, but good enough for me. Of course everyone in my other browser sessions is tracking me between sites, but it isn't linked to my social profiles and such. TBH I don't really care about the tracking of me. The thing that I find annoys is the combined tracking of me and my contacts: I don't like the idea of them trying to track other people through me.
  • fchollet 12y ago
    This is a very shallow way of "escaping"; your browsing activity is definitely being linked to your social media identities via your IP(s) and browser fingerprint. For instance Google does maintain such non-cookie-based user identities. I'd be highly surprised if Facebook didn't as well; your data is just too valuable to pass on such easy fixes.
    • dspillett 12y ago
      Aye, my IP addresses at most locations are fixed. The browser fingerprint isn't going to help them though. Of course the only real solution (other than cutting yourself off completely) is for there to be a stable, secure, reliable, non-tracked, ad-free alternative that enough people use - and that isn't going to happen unless you have a spare high improbability generator handy.
  • gleenn 12y ago
    I sandbox Facebook inside Firefox, its the only thing I do with that browser. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy for continuing to use the browser too, I like Mozilla.
• teamhappy 12y ago
  I take it Ghostery takes care of it as well. Does anybody know?
  • zo1 12y ago
    I'd also be curious to know this. Ghostery was quite an eye-opener when I first tried it. Everytime you go to a site, it lists all the items that it blocked on that page.
  • mp3geek 12y ago
    I can't speak for Ghostery, but when false positives on webpages occur its easier to debug and fix issues in Adblock Plus.
    • teamhappy 12y ago
      Debugging as a user or developer? It literally takes a single click to disable a specific tracker for a specific site or to disable tracking globally to see if Ghostery broke something.
  • mp3geek 12y ago
    Its a bit old, but Adblock Plus lists rank pretty well for privacy; http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6730 http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6730 also another comparson; https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-does-HTTP-Switchboard-compares-to-AdBlock-%2C-Ghostery-or-Disconnect-concerning-privacy%3F https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-does-HTT...
    • teamhappy 12y ago
      The block lists are great. I'm using them in a different plugin though.
  • bmcd87 12y ago
    Yes, Ghostery has multiple different Facebook trackers in it's database. This doesn't seem like anything new, just a reaction to the news that Facebook is going to expand what they do with the data they collect. (I'm a Ghostery developer)
• Bassetts 12y ago
  I recently switched from Adblock Plus to HTTP Switchboard[0]. I find it gives you much better control over what gets blocked, and it properly blocks what you have told it to, not just hide them. I have it set up in quite a restrictive way so by default a site level scope is created and only image/css is allowed. It means I have to take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes to enable things a site needs to function, but I much prefer that to having tracking cookies, social media buttons, obnoxious adverts etc. Also the Adblock site claims you can also block a few annoyances specific to Facebook[0]. Is that actually the case? I thought Adblock just used element hiding. [0] https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/ https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/ [1] https://facebook.adblockplus.me/en/ https://facebook.adblockplus.me/en/
  • mkesper 12y ago
    Not (yet) available for Firefox, sorrily.
    • Bassetts 12y ago
      That is true, and something I forgot to mention in my original comment. I do believe the author intends to eventually have it work on Firefox, but I doubt that will be any time soon due to the fact it currently relies heavily on the Chrome API.
  • Ardren 12y ago
    Initial ad blocking extensions for Chrome used element hiding due to addon limitations in Chrome. But for at least the last few years Chrome allows extensions to block requests. I think Firefox has always been able to do this.
  • gorhill 12y ago
    Last week-end I introduced µBlock (or uBlock) [1] for users who do not like to deal with the more complicated HTTP Switchboard. It does rather well against other popular blockers [2], which shows that ABP does indeed block requests, not just hide HTML elements. Compare the numbers of domains reached with when no blocker is used. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmarks https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmarks [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmarks https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#benchmarks
• xkarga00 12y ago
  Adblock official blogpost https://adblockplus.org/blog/about-that-facebook-tracking-thing https://adblockplus.org/blog/about-that-facebook-tracking-th...
• r0h1n 12y ago
  AdBlock Plus once blocked Google ads, till Google decided to pay them [0] to "whitelist" their ads by default. The cynical part of me sees this as a precursor for AdBlock to sign a deal with Facebook and let their ads/tracking through too, for a price of course. [0] http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-google-whitelist http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-go...
  • mp3geek 12y ago
    If you want to disable the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising", that option is available.
    • teamhappy 12y ago
      Or just use the other one: https://getadblock.com/ https://getadblock.com/
    • Loughla 12y ago
      I have adblock installed on every machine I use, and I have that unchecked. Google 'unobtrusive' ads still appear.
  • Ardren 12y ago
    AdBlock Plus wants to encourage non obtrusive advertising. Anyone can apply to have their ads/website added to the acceptable-ads whitelist. Larger companies are charged a maintenance fee. There is a single checkbox in the options to toggle the whitelist, as well as a link to filter list being used and documentation. Source: https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
    • hnha 12y ago
      Yeah, but silent tracking in the background does not seem obstructive by their definition.
      • coldpie 12y ago
• qwerta 12y ago
  I use web less and less. It just does not have that good experience, compared to dedicated devices and apps. Also it requires constant connection, way too much hassle while traveling. For video I use dedicated apps with off-line caching. For email I have IMAP. I get news via RSS. Anything longer than 1 page, I save and read on Kindle latter (including HN discussions). I have off-line version of Wikipedia.
• daemonk 12y ago
  Someone should make a plugin that actively sends facebook false tracking information along with your own.
  • surreal 12y ago
    I seem to remember a schoolgirl developing a project to do exactly that, a few months ago on HN. Trying to dig it out now, unless anyone else can chime in?
  • Omniusaspirer 12y ago
    Now that's a funny idea. Instead of just opting out you can poison the tracking info pool which basically invalidates any of the data they get even the legitimate stuff.
    • zo1 12y ago
      And thereby forcing them to try figure out "who" is creating the poison data, which seems like quite a difficult problem to solve. *Edit:typo.
    • malka 12y ago
      Yeah. The data could even be pooled among some users to fuzz the stats even more, the same way some people shuffle their groceries card.
  • zvrba 12y ago
    I was seriously considering to make a browser plugin which would scrape pages for Google Analytics unique IDs, make a local database of them and randomly mix them up. Like this: 0. [page visited] 1. Does the page contain GA tracking ID? no: do nothing yes: add it to the database and replace it with another randomly chosen ID from the database
    • BillFranklin 12y ago
      Would pay for that.
    • 12y ago
• nikcub 12y ago
  This is part of the better long-term solution for online privacy. Spend the effort to educate users about privacy and tracking and build easy to use software options, rather than investing time in standards that don't get adopted and are based on trust. The voluntary standards were never going to work since the interests of the parties involved are diametrically opposed. The voluntary systems only work for the ad companies if a very small number of users take up the option and if privacy remains a niche issue. As soon as developers looked to apply DNT broadly, they baulked. Trust is also an issue. Facebook previously said that although their share buttons are hosted on the same domain as facebook.com, meaning cookies are sent - that they are not storing or tracking user web browsing data. They now are using that data, and very little was made of the reversal. The same reversal or business changes could turn on DNT in the same way. With DNT the sites still receive the cookies and can still store the data. They are able to comply with DNT for a period and then later reverse their position and still use the old data for targeting (and a DNT header is one more data bit that says a lot about a user). There are now a number of competing opt out standards. None of them really work and they each have problems, but companies need to be able to say they let users opt out whenever they announce a new tech that encroaches further into our lives (Facebook use aboutads, the NAI has their own, Google has its own, most of the aggregators have their own, there are other efforts to sync opt-out). The solution is to cut the problem off at the head and solve it with software. Browsers and that are easy to use in terms of specifying who you trust (like installing an app) and that don't ever make third-party requests by default. Now that the pretense of negotiating a solution has been dropped, effort can go into developing better software control for users and tech solutions - since none of the current offerings are perfect (which is excusable).
• BillFranklin 12y ago
  Brilliant!
• Angostura 12y ago
  For the vast majority of sites, I am happy for them to show me ads, and also use analytics. I would however like to block Facebook tracking.
• spindritf 12y ago
  The company opted to ignore the Do Not Track setting on Web browsers ... other Internet behemoths, including Google and Yahoo, have publicly confirmed that they also ignore Do Not Track Am I the only one bothered by the silliness of "Do Not Track"? Or even worse, the EU cookie law? You have a browser that leaks all kinds of info[1] about itself, tells everyone where you came from (sends referral), takes cookies from strangers like an untrained dog, making you uniquely identifiable and instead of fixing that, you ask everyone on the web to please disregard that info your browser just volunteered. How is that not completely backwards? AdBlock, RefControl, and Disconnect, or their equivalents should be built into modern browsers. And maybe do something about the user agent, fonts, etc, too? Don't educate users. Fix it. [1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/
  • ben0x539 12y ago
    I also walk around town completely uncamouflaged, voluntarily displaying my uniquely identifiable face and whatnot, and yet somehow most businesses can still restrain themselves and do not follow me around, colluding to enable each other to videotape my every step for analytics purpose. Sure, there's some technical steps that can be taken but there's also a social or cultural dimension to what behavior is popularly accepted fro companies.
    • spindritf 12y ago
      Do you wear an ID around your neck? Do you walk into an establishment, introduce yourself, tell the keeper where you came from, when was the last time you visited, check in with an inter-business tracking device, and then ask them to forget all that? This is what a browser with (or more appropriately, on) DNT is doing. Long way from camouflage. And offline, we should also employ techniques like randomizing MAC addresses in mobile devices. Just like you lock your car even though it's illegal to jack it.
      • ben0x539 12y ago
        No, that stuff only happens when I pay with my credit card, I guess.
• zupa-hu 12y ago
  The Do Not Track movement says Do Not Make Money. The entire movement is pissing against the wind. Tracking is how these companies make money. This is their motivation system. A "low" of current online physics is "tracking makes money". As such, it's a waste of energy. Change physics first.
  • zupa-hu 12y ago
    By the way, many people make valuable content and support their work by ads. Ads are online currency. I am not using adblock because it is like stealing their work without paying.
    • thirsteh 12y ago
      Not if you never click on ads anyway.
  • sp332 12y ago
    A "low" of current online physics is "tracking makes money". That's what this fixes. By pushing back against tracking, we will force websites to use other ways to make money.
• TallboyOne 12y ago
  I can't believe how hard it is to find the link to add this... Go to ad block settings. Add a custom one, give it any title you want. Put this in for the URL: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/fanboy-social.txt https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/fanboy-social.txt
• notastartup 12y ago
  I feel that Adblock is a serious threat to Facebook. If it gets the viral traction, imagine half of the Facebook users using Adblock. The result would be disastrous. I use Adblock and love it dearly. I don't have to watch annoying ads on youtube or deal with intrusive banner ads suggesting I a guide on how to make $5000/day at home in an instant. I do sometimes want to see ads, and that's when I google something and I want to actually see the advertisements. This is a good sign for google although overall, adblock will slowly cannibalize their ads
• zhng 12y ago
  instead of blocking, shouldn't we create extensions that make us appear as the same person on the web?