Privacy Fundamentalism

> suggesting that Stratechery includes trackers from Amazon because I rely on AWS is ridiculous.

On the contrary. Suggesting that Amazon aren't tracking requests to Cloudfront is ridiculous.

You don't need to have malicious intent in order to accidentally send your user's data to third-party companies. Every single time you load any resource from anywhere, you create at minimum a line in their log file that contains your user's IP address, their User-Agent string, the content their browser requested, and the time they requested it.

EDIT: Personally, I no longer load any resources from third-party domains in new code I write. Bootstrap, jquery, etc. get served from the same domain as the rest of the website. Google Analytics is an absolute non-starter. And if you're concerned about wasting loading time or bandwidth on popular assets, you can use the "integrity" attribute to let the browser reuse a cached file from a different domain.

Usually I think stratechery is spot on. But though I agree with a lot of points and it ends on a great note, I have some strong disagreements in this one!

(1) Anything loaded from a third party is potentially a tracker until proven otherwise. If you load Google Analytics, Google gets pinged some information about every visitor. Typekit definitely collects tracking data, although they claim it is anonymized and not identifiable. I believe same goes for New Relic, and both share (or sell?) aggregate user data to other parties as far as I know. Etc.

(2) A beneficial outcome from Apple's stance and the privacy debate would be self-hosted analytics and login-type services that don't connect to any third parties. A site like stratchery could pay for a license to use this software, but host it on their own servers, and have a strong privacy policy around what data is recorded/shared.

I found this article incredibly naive. A recent stint in ad tech showed just how deep the multi-company coordination and orchestration go. Assuming that linking to Google's fonts or images doesn't expose your users or that Adobe's Typekit isn't part of Adobe's Advertising Cloud seems like putting your head in the sand.

Particularly pollyannish is the author's handwaving Google Analytics away with an "only for counting conversions". Holy Crap!

The article kinda beats itself with his examples. E.g. he includes javascript from adobe for a font. Like why is that?

I don't know if Adobe uses that for tracking, but they very well could and that's hard to deny. They could control everything his page, because he uses a font from them. Sometimes there are tradeoffs, but there's no possibly legit reason for this. A font is a static file that changes never. You don't need Javascript to load a font and you certainly don't need to include something from a thirdparty host.

He's saying many of these resources are necessary to run the site, and that it takes effort to not collect data. I'm not disputing that, but isn't it somewhat besides the point? The data is still generated & collected, even if there's no intention of it being used. (which doesn't mean it won't be used at some point). If anything, the argument from privacy would point this out as a deep systemic flaw in the system, that even sites that have no interest in any of this data still have little choice but to generate it if they want to avoid laborious & costly custom solutions to the task of running such a business.

I too remember being annoyed at the thought that my blog wouldn't have accurate analytics anymore if people's ad blockers blocked Google Analytics from loading.

Then I realized tracking even for "benign" purposes isn't a right for website operators and we need to have more respect for our users' computing decisions.

I took Google Analytics off completely. Had no analytics for a while, then tried out my own install of Matomo. That way at least if I'm allowed to "track" my audience, it's using an open source tool running on my own server.

My point is that I don't agree with the author at all. Every third-party resource is a potential vector for abuse, and even mere fonts or payment processors aren't immune from critique. Does this cause hassles for website operators? Sure. But that's the price of doing business online in 2019.

The web desperately needs a privacy course-correction, and the more operators resist the inevitable consumer backlash, the more they will shoot themselves in the foot.

The original article:

> Each dot represents one tracking resource (like a script, tracking pixel or image), which would be blocked by an ad-blocker

[emphasis added]

Immediately after excerpting that, the critique:

> This strikes me as an overly broad definition of tracking; as best I can tell, Manjoo and his team counted every single script, image, or cookie that was loaded from a 3rd-party domain, no matter its function.

Ad blockers typically don't just indiscriminately block all third-party resources. I suspect that the author simply isn't aware of which things are and aren't tracking users, and assumes that they don't track users unless that's their explicit purpose.

"Are...are we the baddies?"

Yes, you are. You are part of the system which tracks the consumer laity.

I can't help but notice this blog entry renders fine with all JavaScript disabled: https://0x0.st/z4bi.png

Despite this, the site wants to load 15 or more first party scripts and more still from third parties. Considering these scripts are evidently not necessary for the reader's benefit, what purpose am I to assume they serve that isn't contrary to my interests?

The key reason people have problem with data-mongers is deceit. Not that absolutist do not understand why privacy is violated, but how. For instance,

- Data Collection: No way to opt-out. Ex: Analytics.

- User Studies: The default is almost always opt-in. Ex: Siri recordings.

This, coupled with the fact that a majority of internet and smartphone users do not understand the second thing about the ad-industry makes this a racket of gargantuan scale.

Also, whether one pays for the services or not, tech companies have made it a routine to encroach upon personal data to increase revenue / profits without providing real value or any value to the end-user: There's always a grave concern of what happens to the data collected when a tech company goes down-under, for a reason.

- Third-party services: Blatant disregard of end-user's privacy with separate terms, conditions, and policy to first-party. Ex: Payment gateways selling purchase data.

- First-party services: Often weasel-worded yet ever-changing, generic and vague privacy policy. And, more often than not, eventually, user ends up being the product. Ex: Anti-virus software / Other free google services like mail, search, maps.

The concerns raised by so-called fundamentalists isn't so much privacy-related but the kind of strategy it entails, with companies from all corners vying for ever decreasing attention time-span to keep them hooked, addicted so they can show more ads, coarse them into buying things they don't want, manipulate them to further someone else's political motives, sway their thoughts to sell more outrage and anxiety, expose them to content just to push the right buttons, target their emotions to control their behaviour... aren't all of these dark patterns abominable? Aren't these in-use by the multi-billion dollar Internet businesses because its easy strategy?

There's more to privacy violations than meets the eye. I expected a more in-depth analysis than concluding that a compromise in privacy and security is okay 'cause it helps weed-out terrorists and pedophiles, and create successful business, like stratechery, online.

Also read: https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/06/superhuman-i...

I find the last few paragraphs about Apple and Webkit to be super... ad hominem? "Apple is taking a stance with Webkit to be absolutist, but Apple violated the privacy of their users with Siri, so why should they be absolutist about Webkit" I really didn't follow that or think it was relevant to the actual discussion around tracking protection at all.

I understand the point about 'gray area', however there is truly a difference in power here, and end-users are never accurately informed about what of their data is available to 3rd party advertisers. In fact, I don't think content producers like Stratechery know what data ad trackers track and how it's used.

There is a problem about funding good content like Stratechery, but surely mass surveillance by private corporations isn't the only option?

I want everyone to be able to go on a website, checkout products in an online shop, look up the menu of a restaurant or post on a forum with an alias, without anyone keeping track. I want everyone to write emails encrypted by default. I want the data transaction to be transparent, temporary and local, like when I decide to buy something online, and need to give them my address. I want services like Siri, Alexa to work local, offline. I want authentication services using public/private keys.

I want all of those things set in stone, not to be overruled by a default checkbox or "I agree" button.

I want a massive, global deletion effort of all the data that had been acquired during the last decades.

> the widespread creation and spread of data is inherent to computers and the Internet

It is not. It is that way because we developed software to he that way

Edit: I don't beleave in absolute privacy, we never had that, but Ibdo think people get surprised and find things creepy for a reason: we are abusing the trust that people had put on us software developers and hardware manufacturers

Article without the tracking: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/146

Do you guys talk to normal people? I do sometimes.

They don't understand that this is going on.

I think when (if?) the normals ever figure out what we're doing to them they will round us up and burn us.

We are deeply embedded in an era of surveillance-capitalism. Technology has made it trivial to passively gather information about people and inexpensive to store data indefinitely, so companies gather, stockpile, and re-sell everything they can. Crucially, the future applications of this data are not limited by our current imagination.

I find the dismissive attitude of this article extremely disappointing. Bad actors are getting away with overreach because they are given the benefit of the doubt. Stop enabling them. Re-evaluate every aspect of your interaction with third-party services and truly consider what they could be doing, from the least-generous perspective available.

Consider how many "best practices" and tools for web development (including browsers themselves) are ultimately designed and popularized by companies with an open interest in spying on users. Technologies like CDNs, AMP, embeddable analytics packages, generic authentication providers, and social sharing buttons all provide some utility or convenience, and may be acceptable or appropriate in some contexts, but it is absurd to consider them harmless. If you have a website, the buck stops with you.

Countless websites- including Stratechery- are literally selling the privacy of their users for kilobytes of hosting costs or mild conveniences. Step up your game, and don't pretend you can't treat your audience with more respect.

> the truth is that all of these “trackers” make Stratechery possible.

Do they? I use Ublock Origin in hard mode[1], meaning just about everything is blocked. Every third-party domain is blocked, as are webfonts and first-party JavaScript. Yet, the site works and I can read the article without a problem.

You could make the case that Stripe is necessary to “make Stratechery possible” because it allows people to pay for memberships, but all the others seem superfluous.

[1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-m...

I'm quite torn that privacy protection tools, which I use liberally as a consumer, can foil fraud-detection tools that I also rely on in my business.

Browser/device fingerprinting is one of these things... bad when used to track you for advertising purposes across the web, good when it can be used to prevent account hijacking ("Hey, it looks like you're signing in with a new device! Please enter the code we just sent you via email.").

It seems to be a "this is why we can't have nice things" situation. That harder it is to identify someone, the harder it is to take proactive measures to defeat credential stuffing attacks and so forth.

I'm all for fundamentalism on that front but among the undesired consequences listed those that related to SSO and 3rd party auth are indeed problematic. Not that I think that the current protocols are holy and should be kept all at cost, on the contrary, I find the privacy issues in those solution very problematic. I avoid using Facebook or Google auth for any 3rd party service.

Nevertheless, at least in enterprise environments, there is a very strong and justified need for federated auth. This is issue that must be solved to keep businesses and users secure.

I remember when I was young, being told not to say or do anything online I didn't want others to know (private messaging being the exception). When did we collectively forget this lesson?

Happy to be a privacy fundamentalist and I'd also be happy to see the entire infrastructure that pays for the internet grind to a halt in favor of pervasive privacy.

Other points seem to be mostly covered in comments, so I'll address this:

> Privacy legislation like GDPR has strengthened incumbents like Facebook and Google, and made it more difficult for challengers to succeed.

That's not a bad thing. We don't need a thriving, innovative adtech market. We need adtech to die.

Every now and then we see articles which dissect how the Internet works, and then are appalled at all the supposed privacy violations. Trackers are part of the web and have been for a long time. I don't see them going away soon. They fund the web and keep it moving along. We get into trouble when all our browsing is done in one session / container and no effort is made to containerize our browsing so that chatty scripts and trackers can't talk to each other via cookies as you traverse the web in any meaningful way.

Personally I divide up my browsing into many different compartments to avoid or seriously hinder tracking. I also only ever enable JS on a site if I really have to. I am suspicious of news articles that demand JS just to read a small bit of text. This is not some magic bullet - I know I will be tracked; but at least now my identity is divided up so much that it's hard to discern who I really am. Couple this type of compartmented browsing with an anonymous mixing network like Tor and it's game over for trackers.

Having one single container / session for all your activity (and without an adblocker like uBlock Origin) is borderline stupid in this day and age and can do more harm than good. The modern web has been designed to be as hostile as possible when you surf 'bareback' without an adblocker and without dividing up your sessions into discrete containers. Of course you will get people that like to surf bareback, with literally zero configurations in their browser and without an Ad-blocker. These are the people who are the most exploited, their every activity mined like it was oil - their whole life put into databases that could leak and be hacked at any moment, meaning they're very susceptible to 'doxing' or having their life ruined.