‘Fingerprinting’ to Track Us Online Is on the Rise | Hacker News Reader

‘Fingerprinting’ to Track Us Online Is on the Rise

nytimes.com

40 pointspseudolus15 comments

Started reading this and aftet a bit I got this:

"You’re in private mode.

Ironic isn't it?

I guess the writers don't talk to their web team.

The writers at NYT seem to have very special beef with Google these days and are churning out smearing articles faster than ever. I don't think they have time to be consistent.

Their constant hit pieces on prominent YouTubers and new media in general has been awful. Hilarious considering how much they must rely on Google for revenue.

fwiw, adding

  0.0.0.0   samizdat-graphql.nytimes.com

to your /etc/hosts fixes this for me.

Thanks much! Now I can read NYT again.

I wonder how they came up with this name. Samizdat was a form of illegal self-publishing in USSR

...or just click the "reading mode" button in your browser.

Works fine with no cookies and no js. They could try harder.. ;)

1st party isolation and blocking 3rd party cookies might be the cause.

Big online journals in terms of tracking are the worst. At the moment every big online journal is worse than any overpriced boutique shop that uses all kinds of filthy upselling techniques (fake discounts, spam, bait and switch, shaming etc) including tracking. They even register and submit mouse events of hovering it over some element, they appear to submit time duration of how long a part of a page was within your viewport. If you don't use any preventive measures, they will keep sending telemetry regularly as long as the page is open. The inadequate amounts of tracking scripts increase traffic by much and noticeably increase CPU consumption. Even without any throughout investigation, if you use some local extension that displays the amount of blocked scripts / DOM elements / requests, you will notice that online journals are always further ahead than any other website.

Thus, the article is written only for the purpose of profiteering on the current increased concerns of online tracking. It doesn't try to resolve the issue even a little.

> What is it exactly? Fingerprinting involves looking at the many characteristics of your mobile device or computer, like the screen resolution, operating system and model, and triangulating this information to pinpoint and follow you as you browse the web and use apps. Once enough device characteristics are known, the theory goes, the data can be assembled into a profile that helps identify you the way a fingerprint would.

For real computers, you can just use VMs, and connect through VPNs. You can have as many as you like, limited only by RAM. Or use burner phones, if you must do mobile.

‘Just’ use burner phones. Like normal people.

Maybe normal people will need to use burner phones. If they don't want to be tracked, anyway. I mean, they're like $10 or whatever at Walmart. And family plans aren't that expensive.

Do you honestly believe that tracking will become illegal in the US? Or even if technically illegal, effectively policed? As, for example. robocalling is?

Presumably this is very illegal under GDPR, and any companies engaging in it may as well start budgeting now for a 4% of turnover donation to the EU.

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