
Adblock Plus gives Facebook users a way to block its extended tracking efforts - robinwauters
http://tech.eu/features/1872/adblock-plus-facebook-tracking/
======
spindritf
_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
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
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.

~~~
chimeracoder
> 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?

Don't worry, there's a startup that's "fixing" that[0].

Nomi uses the MAC address of your phone to identify the brick-and-mortar
venues you visit. It's opt- _out_ for consumers, and the only way to opt-out
is to register your MAC address with them[1].

[0] [http://getnomi.com/](http://getnomi.com/)

[1] [http://nomi.com/privacy/](http://nomi.com/privacy/)

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Luckily there's a simple solution to that: randomized MAC addresses. My laptop
assigns itself a random MAC address on boot. About the only downside is that
some captive portals require me to re-sign-in on boot.

~~~
jasomill
Another downside on some (private) networks is that it breaks MAC-based DHCP
reservations.

------
daemonk
Someone should make a plugin that actively sends facebook false tracking
information along with your own.

~~~
zvrba
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

~~~
tokenizerrr
Wouldn't referral headers give this away? Unless you change those too of
course.

~~~
zvrba
You seem to have more clue about web development than I do (my only experience
with web are Perl/CGI scripts of early 2000s).

Can you describe in more detail how google could detect that the GA identifier
has been swapped and how to prevent detection?

~~~
tokenizerrr
I'm by no means an expert, but usually when a web browser makes a request for
a resource it includes a referral header which tells the server where it came
from. This header is probably sent both to the initial javascript request and
to the tracking pixels it requests to send new info to Google. At a first
glance I feel like if you change the tracking id, and the referrals, you may
have some success messing with their system.

But again, not an expert and I could easily be missing something crucial.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Too late to edit now, but also I would not be suprised if the javascript they
use records the url that is visited and reports that back as well.

------
nikcub
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).

------
r0h1n
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-
go...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-google-
whitelist)

~~~
tech-no-logical
just use adblock edge :

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-
edge/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/)

~~~
notastartup
and of course, it can't be installed on chrome.

almost makes me want to switch to firefox completely and use adblock-edge.

~~~
13throwaway
If you are trying to avoid being tracked by Google I don't recommend using
Chrome.

------
tech-no-logical
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
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).

~~~
nfoz
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
> 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.

------
qwerta
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.

------
Bassetts
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
Not (yet) available for Firefox, sorrily.

~~~
Bassetts
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.

------
Angostura
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.

------
dspillett
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
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
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.

------
teamhappy
I take it Ghostery takes care of it as well. Does anybody know?

~~~
mp3geek
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-HTT...](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-does-HTTP-
Switchboard-compares-to-AdBlock-%2C-Ghostery-or-Disconnect-concerning-
privacy%3F)

~~~
teamhappy
The block lists are great. I'm using them in a different plugin though.

------
TallboyOne
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)

------
freakyterrorist
Great work. This facebook policy was absolutely disgusting.

------
xkarga00
Adblock official blogpost [https://adblockplus.org/blog/about-that-facebook-
tracking-th...](https://adblockplus.org/blog/about-that-facebook-tracking-
thing)

------
zhng
instead of blocking, shouldn't we create extensions that make us appear as the
same person on the web?

------
BillFranklin
Brilliant!

------
notastartup
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

------
zupa-hu
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
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
Not if you never click on ads anyway.

