Hey Apple,
Saying you block trackers but not blocking Google Analytics is like saying you practice safe sex when you cut off the heads of your condoms.
Sincerely,
A guy who makes an app that actually blocks trackers
Google Analytics is the most prevalent tracker in the world. During our last crawl, we found it on 64.2% of web sites:
https://better.fyi/trackers/google-analytics.com/
Developers: every time you add Google Analytics to a site, you are helping build the global panopticon. Stop it!
@aral confirmed by HTTPArchive Data, as the most proeminent analytics script. https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js represents 0.64% of all the requests of their dataset. https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2019/third-parties
I'd classify Google's font CDN as a tracker also.
It gets:
* Your IP
* Your user agent
* Date & time of visit
* HTTP Referrer (knows what site you visit)
There's little stopping them from correlating your IP with your Google account, if you used the account from your IP and agreed to their services.
Oh, there's also their DNS server.
Read more on my site: https://danuker.go.ro/how-to-protect-your-personal-data.html
@danuker @borisschapira As would I. But unless developers stop adding Google’s trackers to their web sites, we would break most of the web if we blocked that.
@ldexterldesign Vivaldi phones home and to Google every 24 hours, checking for updates.
Here is an exploration of the requests it sends: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html
@danuker thanks for referencing this though, I must have missed it in my feed etc.
@aral @danuker @borisschapira decentraleyes?
Decentraleyes barely blocks anything. It seems to work for handpicked resources instead of caching everything on third-party domains.
A user even complains here about fonts and CDNs: https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/issues/34
With uBlock Origin, by default, I block everything except the main server. This breaks many sites, but I can live with that and manage it.
Also, I get rapidly informed of sites that prioritize saving a fraction of bandwidth and/or style over my privacy.
@danuker @aral @borisschapira oh, dang. thanks.
@SoniEx2 @danuker @aral I block everything at the host file level, so that Apps are also prevented to share data with trackers. Blokada on Android, and a script on Mac OS https://boris.schapira.dev/notes/2018-09-one-host-file-to-block-them-all/
Cool! Your approach does cover all apps, but it relies on a big blacklist that needs updating as trackers change domains.
I guess you could also benefit from uBlock Origin and see what 3rd party requests go through unblocked.
@danuker @SoniEx2 @borisschapira And, if you want to, you can use the Better block list with uBlock Origin (but I wouldn’t mix it with others as we go to great pains to try and not break sites while still protecting you/ourselves) :) https://better.fyi/blockerList.txt
@aral @borisschapira
Using uBlock Origin, I block third party requests by default.
I need to make adjustments for few sites, and IceWeasel's (also Firefox's) Reader View unbreaks articles even with off-domain CSS.