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I'm completely cool with ads; what I'd like to see is the ability to block analytics, for example one-pixel transparent gifs as well as javascript "sources" con

I'm completely cool with ads; what I'd like to see is the ability to block analytics, for example one-pixel transparent gifs as well as javascript "sources" consisting of one character of whitespace. I can do this with the hosts file but that requires that I jailbreak my device. Most are not going to want to do that. I'm also concerned about "mobile analytics" in which SDKs are offered free of charge to app developers so they can determine how users operate their apps. However the data centers are quite costly to operate; _someone_ must be paying for all that. I expect mobile analytics can be blocked in the hosts file as well but it isn't so straightforward to determine the hostnames to blackhole.

walterbell 11y ago
> I can do this with the hosts file but that requires that I jailbreak my device. Most are not going to want to do that. Alternatively, VPN to a home router and filter all traffic there, for TV, desktops, laptops, mobile.
- Abundnce10 11y ago
  Do you find your browsing speeds increase when you do this? I ask because I'm assuming the page loads faster without the ads but it must be offset (to some extent) by the VPN connection. Also, can you link to any examples on setting this up on an Android device?
  - walterbell 11y ago
    Here's an example: pfSense 2.1.5 (which can be run in a Xen VM) with Android, iOS, Windows and Linux clients, https://blog.andregasser.net/how-to-configure-ipsec-vpn-on-pfsense-for-use-with-iphone-ipad-android-windows-and-linux/ https://blog.andregasser.net/how-to-configure-ipsec-vpn-on-p... I'm still setting this up so don't yet have field data on performance, but 4G LTE ping times are about double the latency of home broadband, http://blog.catchpoint.com/2014/01/15/theres-no-avoiding-network-latency-on-4g/ http://blog.catchpoint.com/2014/01/15/theres-no-avoiding-net....
  - click170 11y ago
    Filtering in this way does provide a significant speed hit if you choose to use your home router but nothing is stopping you from using a VPS instead. For me the primary concern is privacy and security and using the always on VPN is the best way I've found to protect what I value. Nothing gets out without my expressed consent, just the way I like it.
    - walterbell 11y ago
      Are you using Android or iOS? There seems to be flakiness on iOS8 where the VPN gets disconnected during a change between WiFi and Cellular, or if the device is locked.
      - click170 11y ago
        I'm using android. The VPN can drop out when I change networks, but it reconnects in less than a single second under good conditions, and that's not an exaggeration. I use a plain ipsec xauth VPN. Having tried both ipsec with l2tp and openvpn SSL VPN, ipsec is the only one I can get to reconnect in under a second. All the others take at least 5 seconds to complete a handshake.
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  You don't need to VPN. A DNS server works as well as a hosts file and is much faster than putting every request through your network.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    Good point. VPN can be used to deliver the ad-blocking DNS server to multiple mobile devices, enabling access to VPN-hosted files while leaving most traffic on the cellular network.
davidgerard 11y ago
http://lwn.net/Articles/646339/ http://lwn.net/Articles/646339/ privacy.trackingprotection.enabled Works on Firefox on desktop and Android. Speeds up browsing 40% on particularly obnoxious sites. (AdBlockPlus also works in Firefox Android.)
popcornarsonist 11y ago
> The new Safari release brings Content Blocking Safari Extensions to iOS. Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content. It seems like this feature isn't really just "ad blocking", it's the ability to write any kind of blocking extension. So a plugin that blocks analytics should be pretty doable.
morgante 11y ago
Why do you think creators shouldn't be allowed to know how many people are reading their content?
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  I'm completely cool with the analysis of one's own web server logs. What I'm not cool with is Hacker News knowing that KindGirls is my favorite website of ill repute. Consider the challenge faced by closeted homosexual presidential candidates. Analytics is also used for credit scoring. That is, suppose I were to hang out at sites that covered asset protection, bankrupcy. There are all kinds of ways to beat debt collectors, most of them perfectly legal and while well-documented they are not well known. Were I to apply for any manner of loan after hanging out at all these sites, my loan would not be approved. If you don't believe me I can dig up the specific company that offers this "service" however not just now as it will take me some time to find it again.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Why do you think you need anything other than the HTTP server logs to find out that number?
  - morgante 11y ago
    > Why do you think you need anything other than the HTTP server logs to find out that number? All server logs tell you is that some user agent loaded the page. They tell you absolutely nothing about whether that computer was actually a person, or if that person actually read the article. I don't understand all the hate around analytics. Data is how better decisions are made.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      Tracking that kind of information is the worst kind of surveillance there is. You see it as profitable data, but lots of things are profitable or useful, and sometimes society sees things as going too far and those things get restricted or banned. Breaking into people's homes is useful, even if you don't take anything; this distinction is so significant that just the violation of someone's property was made into it's own, separate crime. The problem is that technology has made the personal boundaries somewhat harder to define, and this is being made worse by the fact that there are a LOT of people that are ignorant about how that technology actually works and a lot of businesses that are finding it really profitable to take advantage of this ignorance. Analytics, for example. Baring any specific contracts[1], the transaction that is implicit when someone clicks on a link is that their computer will request some other computer (identified by the host in the URL they clicked on), with the expectation that the other side may (or may not) send a document (or document-like thing) back in reply. Unfortunately - and unknown to most people - the technical nature of HTML and especially Javascript have made it easy to include 3rd parties into construction of the page, and for the transaction to continue FAR longer than the initial click+download. As part of that increase in scope, many people have now decided that they have some sort of right to this extension, a right to run Turing complete code on other people's CPUs, and a right for 3rd parties to be involved. None of that exists - we haven't signed a contract - and just because you found a technical trick that lets you accomplish this kind of surveillance doesn't mean you should do it, or that it is morally right. Asking you for a page obviously consents to you knowing about that request. Logging information about people without their knowledge or consent makes you an overly-nosy neighbor at best, and a stalker that should face criminal charges at worst. The truth is probably somewhere in between those extremes. Why does this matter? Because as you say - data is how decisions are made. Data wants to be aggregated and aggregated data is an attractive nuisance to people that want to exploit that data. Do you really want to have the fact that you spent N hours reading on some topic to be known whatever government we end up having in the future? Do you think your insurance companies are interested if you read various topics that interest them? There are incalculable potential problems with storing personal data, simply because we cannot predict what subset of that data will be problematic in the future. By logging data at all, you are creating this future - and that makes you an enemy of those of us that still value privacy. I suggest that your business model needs updating. Maybe it only requires being clever and finding a socially-responsible way to make those same decisions. Maybe some business models are pathological, and need to go away. I don't think those lines are perfectly clear yet, so I wish you luck should you choose to pursue a different path. Oh, and because this is about analytics, that means Google in most cases. A single party. One would think the potential monopolistic issue would be enough to stop using their analytics services. Anyway, if you truly want to learn about what this backlash is about - which is a backlash against all aspects of "surveillance as a business model" - then I recommend watching the link I have posted here several times recently of Aral Balkan's recent talk[2], as he explains things in far more detail. If you have any sense of privacy left, it might just terrify you. [1] if one side is highly ignorant of what the contract's consequences are, I consider that a contract made in bad faith [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

walterbell 11y ago

> I can do this with the hosts file but that requires that I jailbreak my device. Most are not going to want to do that. Alternatively, VPN to a home router and filter all traffic there, for TV, desktops, laptops, mobile.

Abundnce10 11y ago
Do you find your browsing speeds increase when you do this? I ask because I'm assuming the page loads faster without the ads but it must be offset (to some extent) by the VPN connection. Also, can you link to any examples on setting this up on an Android device?
- walterbell 11y ago
  Here's an example: pfSense 2.1.5 (which can be run in a Xen VM) with Android, iOS, Windows and Linux clients, https://blog.andregasser.net/how-to-configure-ipsec-vpn-on-pfsense-for-use-with-iphone-ipad-android-windows-and-linux/ https://blog.andregasser.net/how-to-configure-ipsec-vpn-on-p... I'm still setting this up so don't yet have field data on performance, but 4G LTE ping times are about double the latency of home broadband, http://blog.catchpoint.com/2014/01/15/theres-no-avoiding-network-latency-on-4g/ http://blog.catchpoint.com/2014/01/15/theres-no-avoiding-net....
- click170 11y ago
  Filtering in this way does provide a significant speed hit if you choose to use your home router but nothing is stopping you from using a VPS instead. For me the primary concern is privacy and security and using the always on VPN is the best way I've found to protect what I value. Nothing gets out without my expressed consent, just the way I like it.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    Are you using Android or iOS? There seems to be flakiness on iOS8 where the VPN gets disconnected during a change between WiFi and Cellular, or if the device is locked.
    - click170 11y ago
      I'm using android. The VPN can drop out when I change networks, but it reconnects in less than a single second under good conditions, and that's not an exaggeration. I use a plain ipsec xauth VPN. Having tried both ipsec with l2tp and openvpn SSL VPN, ipsec is the only one I can get to reconnect in under a second. All the others take at least 5 seconds to complete a handshake.
0942v8653 11y ago
You don't need to VPN. A DNS server works as well as a hosts file and is much faster than putting every request through your network.
- walterbell 11y ago
  Good point. VPN can be used to deliver the ad-blocking DNS server to multiple mobile devices, enabling access to VPN-hosted files while leaving most traffic on the cellular network.

davidgerard 11y ago

http://lwn.net/Articles/646339/ http://lwn.net/Articles/646339/ privacy.trackingprotection.enabled Works on Firefox on desktop and Android. Speeds up browsing 40% on particularly obnoxious sites. (AdBlockPlus also works in Firefox Android.)

popcornarsonist 11y ago

> The new Safari release brings Content Blocking Safari Extensions to iOS. Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content. It seems like this feature isn't really just "ad blocking", it's the ability to write any kind of blocking extension. So a plugin that blocks analytics should be pretty doable.

morgante 11y ago

Why do you think creators shouldn't be allowed to know how many people are reading their content?

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
I'm completely cool with the analysis of one's own web server logs. What I'm not cool with is Hacker News knowing that KindGirls is my favorite website of ill repute. Consider the challenge faced by closeted homosexual presidential candidates. Analytics is also used for credit scoring. That is, suppose I were to hang out at sites that covered asset protection, bankrupcy. There are all kinds of ways to beat debt collectors, most of them perfectly legal and while well-documented they are not well known. Were I to apply for any manner of loan after hanging out at all these sites, my loan would not be approved. If you don't believe me I can dig up the specific company that offers this "service" however not just now as it will take me some time to find it again.
pdkl95 11y ago
Why do you think you need anything other than the HTTP server logs to find out that number?
- morgante 11y ago
  > Why do you think you need anything other than the HTTP server logs to find out that number? All server logs tell you is that some user agent loaded the page. They tell you absolutely nothing about whether that computer was actually a person, or if that person actually read the article. I don't understand all the hate around analytics. Data is how better decisions are made.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    Tracking that kind of information is the worst kind of surveillance there is. You see it as profitable data, but lots of things are profitable or useful, and sometimes society sees things as going too far and those things get restricted or banned. Breaking into people's homes is useful, even if you don't take anything; this distinction is so significant that just the violation of someone's property was made into it's own, separate crime. The problem is that technology has made the personal boundaries somewhat harder to define, and this is being made worse by the fact that there are a LOT of people that are ignorant about how that technology actually works and a lot of businesses that are finding it really profitable to take advantage of this ignorance. Analytics, for example. Baring any specific contracts[1], the transaction that is implicit when someone clicks on a link is that their computer will request some other computer (identified by the host in the URL they clicked on), with the expectation that the other side may (or may not) send a document (or document-like thing) back in reply. Unfortunately - and unknown to most people - the technical nature of HTML and especially Javascript have made it easy to include 3rd parties into construction of the page, and for the transaction to continue FAR longer than the initial click+download. As part of that increase in scope, many people have now decided that they have some sort of right to this extension, a right to run Turing complete code on other people's CPUs, and a right for 3rd parties to be involved. None of that exists - we haven't signed a contract - and just because you found a technical trick that lets you accomplish this kind of surveillance doesn't mean you should do it, or that it is morally right. Asking you for a page obviously consents to you knowing about that request. Logging information about people without their knowledge or consent makes you an overly-nosy neighbor at best, and a stalker that should face criminal charges at worst. The truth is probably somewhere in between those extremes. Why does this matter? Because as you say - data is how decisions are made. Data wants to be aggregated and aggregated data is an attractive nuisance to people that want to exploit that data. Do you really want to have the fact that you spent N hours reading on some topic to be known whatever government we end up having in the future? Do you think your insurance companies are interested if you read various topics that interest them? There are incalculable potential problems with storing personal data, simply because we cannot predict what subset of that data will be problematic in the future. By logging data at all, you are creating this future - and that makes you an enemy of those of us that still value privacy. I suggest that your business model needs updating. Maybe it only requires being clever and finding a socially-responsible way to make those same decisions. Maybe some business models are pathological, and need to go away. I don't think those lines are perfectly clear yet, so I wish you luck should you choose to pursue a different path. Oh, and because this is about analytics, that means Google in most cases. A single party. One would think the potential monopolistic issue would be enough to stop using their analytics services. Anyway, if you truly want to learn about what this backlash is about - which is a backlash against all aspects of "surveillance as a business model" - then I recommend watching the link I have posted here several times recently of Aral Balkan's recent talk[2], as he explains things in far more detail. If you have any sense of privacy left, it might just terrify you. [1] if one side is highly ignorant of what the contract's consequences are, I consider that a contract made in bad faith [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...