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by tempguy9999 2492 days ago
That was helpful.

The original comment that you seemed to be replying to was "Right now it's really convenient for advertisers to run an ad auction right in the user's web browser because all the context is there". I thought you were saying blocking that crap in your browser didn't make a difference.

I can't see your pic because I never allow JS outside of a VM.

If tracking is enabled in a browser it becomes vastly easier for them to assign unique cookies to follow you. OK, now then can do it with etags and browser fingerprinting - mitigating the latter is possible, I don't know about the former.

But this...

> If the tracking all happens server-side I have no idea what sites are tracking me and I can't do anything to prevent it.

...is dubious. Etags and fingerprints aside, tracking non-cooperating (cookie declining) browsers has to be harder. I agree with you about tracking being the problem though.
1 comments
wlesieutre 2492 days ago
Harder on shared internet connections, for sure. But my apartment's internet connection is for the most part my own traffic, or guests who bring their phone over. Any traffic coming from that can be trivially tied to me.

I can use a VPN to hide my IP on most of my devices, except for when I'm trying to watch Netflix/Amazon/whatever. But I wish I didn't have to.

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tempguy9999 2492 days ago
There's a big difference between your ISP knowing stuff and the river of scum that is advertising.

> But I wish I didn't have to.

One way or other you will always have to. Perhaps the most important way of destroying the ad industry online is to have an alternative means of funding sites. Maybe that would work.

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wlesieutre 2491 days ago
Of course my ISP knows my identity, but my point is it's also probably not hard for an advertising company to get one piece of data that links my real identity to my cable modem's IP address, and then any tracking data they've previously accumulated can potentially be tied to that after the fact. They just need to tell when IP was assigned to me, which is probably easy to infer from a sudden change in what websites an IP is visiting.

On a related note, remember that time when AT&T and Verizon were just giving out the cell numbers associated with their customers' IP addresses to whoever asked, because they're complete fucking morons who thought that was a good idea?

https://medium.com/@philipn/want-to-see-something-crazy-open...

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