Slashdot Mirror
Google and Facebook Top Biggest Web Tracker List
itwbennett writes "A new report from Evidon, whose browser plug in Ghostery tracks Web trackers, makes it plain that 'if you want to worry about somebody tracking you across the Web, worry about Google,' writes blogger Dan Tynan. Google and Facebook, and their various services, occupy all of the top 5 slots on the Evidon Global Tracker Report's list of the most prolific trackers. 'And if you have any tracking anxiety left over, apply it to social networks like Facebook, G+, and Twitter,' adds Tynan."
Check out the Collusion plugin from Mozilla if you want to see for yourself who is tracking you and the relationships between them. Has a nice graphical overview.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/
I suggest this Firefox extension. Works quite well for me.
Scientia est Potentia
Google derives 96% of its revenue from advertising. All those shiny "free" Google services you love to play with are the result of their ability to monetize information they gather about you. Without tracking, there is no Google. Just keep that in mind.
This is why I stay logged out of my Google account whenever possible and only access Facebook when I absolutely have to. Privacy is dead. Google talks a good talk with "Don't be evil", but actions speak louder than words. And Facebook might be the biggest enemy of privacy on the web right now.
My Ghostery list of blocked trackers occasionally goes near the bottom of the page. I won't surf without it anymore, but it scares the crap out of me.
slashdot apparently uses google analytics and scorecard research.
Does anyone have a list of reasonable whitelist entries for ghostery?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
For Firefox I use the Request Policy add-on to block 3rd-party requests. This helps prevent cross-site request forgery (CSRF) as well.
Every time I have to whitelist a cookie to get a website to work what other third party cookies are always sitting there in the block list. I'll give you two guesses.
Well... except for porn sites. They have about 10 - 15 blocked third party cookies, but none of them are Google/Facebook........
That's ok. You should have no expectation of privacy with Google. If you were riding a bus, would you expect everyone to cover their ears? You should be careful about what you do or type if you are concerned about keeping that information private (which is your right). However, when you willfully divulge that once-private information, it ain't private anymore.
That's why I drew this
Disclaimer: I didn't really know. I just thought of the design and thought it would look neat
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Reprising the comment I posted over on TFA:
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He had me until he praised the Wall Street Journal series. While the goal of informing non-technical people about tracking on the web is a good one, the series has been full of inaccuracies, omissions and sensationalism. WSJ seems to actively avoid telling people how easy it is to avoid/minimize tracking and AFAIK has never broached the obvious conflict of interest issue raised by their reporting.
Like most Slashdot readers am no fan of tracking and targeted advertising and I run the usual suite of blockers you would expect (Ghostery, AdBlock Plus, NoScript, FlashBlock, Better Privacy, etc etc. But intellectual rigor is even more important to me. It has been missing from the WSJ reporting.
Does anyone remember, back in the day, when browsers shipped configured so that all cookies set had to be explicitly authorized to be set? Remember how the first thing everyone did was change their configuration to auto-accept? Remember how browsers eventually changed to just have that setting by default?
A site cannot track you across third-party sites. Not unless you let them. It's just that users have deferred that responsibility to their browser's configuration, and are now complaining that they've been granting authorization to let these sites track them. The result is articles like this, and heavy-handed legislation like the EUs recent cookie-ban. All because users are too lazy and ignorant to take the responsibility on themselves. Hell, with modern browsers and addon/extension models, you don't even need to use the coarse-grained approach that old-school browsers used. Just a plugin that let's you whitelist cookies.
But it sounds like even that's too much effort for the average user. Just complain, and rely on the courts.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
If you were riding a bus, would you expect everyone to cover their ears?
I expect them to "hear" but not deliberately "listen", certainly not to "record", and absolutely not to maintain a linked set of recordings they have made of me at different times I have been on the bus.
This is the social contract most normal people live by.
Next you will be telling me the sky is blue, and water is wet. Thanks for the report Sherlock!
I agree with you.
Just thought I'd share my ultimate brownie recipe with you. Take a saucepan and start melting real butter (125g) and chocolate (185g) and melt on a low heat. Then add 50g flour, 40g Cocoa and 275g sugar. Stir into mixture and then add three eggs. Pour into a greased or papred tin and place in oven for about 25 minutes and they're delicious. They're not to dense or light and they are rich but not overpowering.
You can also mix in chocolate chunks or nuts to make it even nicer.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
... the headline "Google tops web tracking list" would be too anti-Google to post on slashdot?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
This. What Google and Facebook are doing is what people in the real life would call "stalking". You can actually sue somebody for that and get restraining orders, so that is indeed a social contract.
I understand the inclusion of the usual suspects (F and G), but Twitter? I always assumed they were the least evil birds in the flock. According to the report, Twiiter button ranks as No. 6 in the trackers' top 20, behind the No. 4 Google+, sandwiched between Facebook Social (No. 3) and Connect (No. 5). Apparently G+ is already more popular than Twitter, at least as far as the geek market is concerned.
I use NoScript myself (and Ghostery), but most people can't deal with how you have to selectively allow javascript domains to get new sites to work under NoScript.
Ghostery accomplishes most of what you want (don't track me, don't steal my info) effortlessly while breaking almost nothing. So you can install it for anyone and not worry too much they'll come complaining to you.
Also, the Ghostery list on any page is freaking scary (Slashdot has only two items). And I'd say 99% of sites are using Google Analytics (including Slashdot).
As an aggregator they would cease to function if the major search providers(that rely on advertising) disappeared. therefore they (indirectly) rely on internet users being tracked.
i don't know if it's just my monitor/settings but i also find that bottom line seperating sponsored links from real ones nearly impossible to see.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I agree 100% with everything you posted. Privacy is only important to me in the context of the government. And Google ranks among the highest according to the EFF on government transparency - so I call that a good thing.
Why do so many people seem to get upset over targeted ads, is the thing I muse over constantly. I think the root of the problem is the ego. People get upset and disturbed at the thought that a company and/or it's collection of algorithms and research, might know more about their psychology than they know themselves - whereas I resigned myself to that fact a long time ago.
Once you realize you're just another sweaty sapiens on this planet and not really all that special compared to everyone else, you ARE NOT unique, and you CAN EASILY be profiled... then you can stop worrying about this kind of crap.
and itworld.com has a nice set of 17 diffirent trackers on that page reported by gostery ...
That social contract goes against basic human freedoms. So it should be illegal for someone to use a video camera in public? Just because someone chooses to do it on a larger scale and actually use the information is still just practicing a basic right.
Someone who does this can be considered an a$$. But trying to regulate it has nearly infinite costs and millions of use cases to independently judge.
That social contract goes against basic human freedoms
No, it doesn't.
So it should be illegal for someone to use a video camera in public?
Not at all.
Just because someone chooses to do it on a larger scale and actually use the information is still just practicing a basic right.
If someone follows me around with a video camera making a documentary of my habits to post onlin, and sell to advertisers, that is miles away from someone video taping their own kids as I walk by in the background.
Can you REALLY not see a difference?
But trying to regulate it has nearly infinite costs and millions of use cases to independently judge.
The video camera industry has managed just fine. Even shows like COPS manage it. Either someone is a paid actor / signed a waiver, or they get blurred out before they can use the captured footage. It doesn't have infinite costs and millions of use cases.
Same could (and should) apply to the internet.