How tracking pixels work
jvns.ca
jvns.ca
1. You don't need to visit Facebook properties for them to link your activity to you. Unless you're a brand new user and they have never finger printed you...
2. Referrer might be in the pixel tracker, but there is way more to that, including product IDs, product costs, your stage in the funnel (have you Added to Cart but not Purchased?), product category, etc.
3. Everytime a Facebook owned property (or piece of: Like button, FB connect) is 'used' by a device you use, then you can be sure the relation between you and that Pixel call is made (ahem, improved).
Install the Chrome Extension Facebook Pixel Helper, and check what happens when you use an ecom site. You'll be amazed to see what is shared with Facebook (no PII though).
The site-wide implementation will, for example, enable URLs that meet %string% to be grouped into a "segment". And then you can serve specific ads to that segment while excluding others
Without it you're not going to achieve much on Facebook as you need to feedback their system when a particular ad had an impact so that they can model the ad delivery accordingly and get you more converting users. Whatever your conversion is (viewing a page, registering, purchasing).
You'd be surprised at how many businesses do things like label things identifying their high value audiences, creative or products just to have it human readable in other reporting with zero obfuscation. Likewise, you can see if they are using any interesting tech you are not.
0x0 pixels arent a valid image, iirc.
This is the description supplied for the extension: "PixelBlock is a Gmail extension that blocks people from tracking when you open their emails."
I use Privacy Badger by the EFF. They block all kinds of tracking.
Also using Firefox will prevent Browser fingerprinting and such.
On mac turn off: Mail -> Preferences -> Viewing -> Load Remote Content in Messages
Without it, viewing a spam or phishing email will confirm your email address.
Viewing other emails will confirm that you viewed it, when you viewed it, how many times you viewed it, etc.
sigh, what a cesspool.
Wow. I am very strongly considering switching to Firefox now, just from this paragraph.
Plus they fixed their issues with performance, so it works just as well as the other browsers on my mbp.
I will also take a moment to rant about the fact that YouTube allows you to select from a bevy of lower resolutions, but doesn’t allow you to select a lower frame rate. Many times I would rather watch a 1080p30 video on slower hardware instead of the 720p60 I am forced into selecting.
I've thought about this too. I'm not certain, but I suspect this has to do with streaming video compression, specifically the fact that most video compression schemes I know of are temporal (i.e. they can eliminate the need to transmit a lot of data based on unchanged or productively changing pixels between consecutive frames). With a lower frame rate, the probability that pixels in consecutive frames being related decreases. That's my guess anyway.
I recently went to a website which had 250 (!) tracking cookies for marketing purposes... As you might suspect it was ridden with ads.
https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...
I stopped recommending them.
Chrome is working on fingerprinting resistance and developing privacy preserving APIs that can replace third party cookies: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... https://blog.chromium.org/2019/08/potential-uses-for-privacy... https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/building-a-more-priv...
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
> Chrome is working on fingerprinting resistance and developing privacy preserving APIs that can replace third party cookies
And what will their (business and thus vital) interest in doing this probably be? Probably not what's in my, the user's interest. But what's in their customers' interest - advertisers.
> I work on ads at Google
Well...
(Thank you for the disclosure though.)
Honestly it's kind of a rhetorical question because by having the nag screen the damage is already done to Google's reputation and it makes me feel really icky. Opting out of the nag screen just hides the grossness, and I would rather be reminded that using Chrome, and by extension all Google products, is just a bad idea.
Google's ad networks do use cookies for ad targeting, even in Chrome.
If you can point me towards a source that discusses the technical details of how Google tracks its users, I'd be interested in reading it.
That's not how identity works on the web. Cookies are how every site tracks logged-in identity, including Facebook. To test this, clear your facebook.com cookies and observe that you're logged out.
But they may also be fingerprinting; I don't know how they do things.
The key thing from my perspective, though, is that Google ads don't have any sort of special treatment in Chrome.
Fingerprinting is less reliable and more difficult to use, but it's powerful enough that multiple companies will have a clear picture of your browsing history whether your browser blocks third party cookies or not.
Fingerprinting is worse for users because you don't have control over it. If you open a private browsing window, close it, and open another one you're a different user from a cookie perspective but the same user from a fingerprinting perspective.
> what will their (business and thus vital) interest in doing this probably be?
My understanding from what Chrome has said publicly is that they're trying to get both (a) websites can make similar money from ads as they do now, keeping browsing free and (b) users have much more privacy than they do now, keeping third parties from being able to compile browsing histories for users.
Users benefit from (a) because they value these sites and from (b) because they don't want their browsing histories leaked.
[1] https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb...
However, if people frequenting a tech forum are not aware of the privacy benefits that Firefox has been pushing for a long time now, we as "tech folk" have a responsibility to push out the message.
So you can find out more about Firefox tracking here - https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox-bloc...
And the Firefox Facebook Container may also be of interest - https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/
Hopefully, you're now reading replies to your initial comment in Firefox!
Both of which were thankfully completely off target. Apparently those two categories are the birdshot of advertising.
Worse advertising is a sacrifice I'm willing to make (as much as I do really like ads for things that are on sale when I happen to need them).
For me, a second reason to prefer them is that ads are noise. If the semantic content of that noise stays irrelevant, it is easier to ignore.
People can have a ton of other reasons, like avoiding temptation.
My turn - genuine question: did you honestly not know people feel this way?
How am I a targeted ad? I didn't say everyone on HN is a targeted ad. However, HN does show targeted ads.
> which seems to be your thesis.
Not even close. You should reread my comment for what it says, not what you want it to say so you can try to reply with a witless comment.
I don't mind supporting companies by not blocking ads on a page, but I do mind being "followed" by them around the internet and IRL.
In short, this allows me to strengthen my focus. Even though this all happens semi-unconsciously, it makes me more immersed in the content I'm actively trying to pay attention to.
I'm sure they'd prefer or even like advertisements that are relevant from page content NOT invasive personal tracking or profiling.
IE: You go to a bathtub website and see an ad for rubber ducks and soap because those products make sense with bathtubs, not with the users browsing history.
Sadly, sacrificing relevancy is currently the only move to speak out about tracking, as a consumer.
Let's say I like cars and I don't care for travelling.
If both sides of the page are background image of a car, I will check what car it is because I like cars. If it's a huge picture of a beach I won't even notice because I don't care for beaches.
On the other hand, when I'm later visiting pornhub I'm unlikely to consider purchase of those tools even though they may appear relevant to my interests based on my previous browsing history. On the other hand, I am more likely to be interested in meeting hot moms from my area then - which is again solely context based.
Advertising works, on everyone, including on me.
No matter how hard I try to not be affected by advertising, I can't stop it from working.
Now, with that said, if I have the option to be exposed to an advertisement for a category of products that I am likely to purchase anywhay, or a category that I will never purchase: Isn't it obvious that my behaviour is more likely to be influenced by the relevant add than the irrelevant one?
Some people might think that the word "brainwashing" is too strong to be used for describing advertising, and maybe it is, but is it really that strange that I would prefer a tiny amount of "brainwashing" over a small amount?
I dont have a solution, as often it is with all these questions, but I hope there is a better way going forward.
So I am in a similar position as you in terms of getting the ad companies to just throw random guesses at me.
But here is what gets me. There is this new push by YouTube that let's you clearly label your videos just for kids.
If I am on YouTube and I am playing a video that clearly is made for only kids, why does YouTube show advertising that is targeted for adults?
Perfect mobile duo for me.
Maybe it's because this is a tech forum. I take care of cookies and third party (and even first party) resources myself - so I don't know and don't care what Firefox does by default. Defaults are good for the other 99% of the people (who usually don't visit tech forums).
I'm under the impression that Safari and Firefox have this enabled by default. Is the only difference that it's disabled by default in Chrome?
But I've always disabled it, on general principles.
But apparently 204 No Content allows you to omit Content-type. Leaving this up in case anyone else was wondering :)
The pixel is simply there to make the request.
Facebook can't show you customized ads if all it can recognize is that it's you. It already knows who you are, you told it by logging in, now it needs to know everything you're doing everywhere else so it can connect all those dots to you. This can't work if all it can say is "this is definitely voidmain0001 from their home computer but I know nothing else about them". The only way is to share that tracking between companies which is more difficult and still more limited in scope than 3rd party cookies.
I know you are voidmain0001 here and can read all your comments. But if I have no idea who you are on amazon.com so I can sell you your favorite tech in my ads then the usefulness of this information is limited.
Just as a rule of thumb, if those mechanisms weren't adding to the precision then nobody would have invested so much in constantly developing them.
P.S. The site above keeps failing half way for me. "Computer says no" type of thing.
But its a lot safer and better in many ways. It forces the site you are visiting to keep the ads safe an only track you when you are on their property (an in turn follow laws were they are located, GDPR in the EU for example).
Sometimes it’s also the base URL too.
Tracking pixels are a pretty ancient technique and for good reason. It's basically no effort at all to set up the basics, and only a tiny bit more effort to get fancy at it and stick the accesses in a database instead of in the server logs.
This is just retargeting, an old hat. You can do even more sophisticated things, like predicting what's the best next step in the sales funnel. In general, every step you take before you purchase online is recorded to build your customer journey. And there's a lot more data, like referrers, user agent, times and so on.
And, it allows me to remind them that our work is utterly terrifying in terms of privacy. That's (part of) why I use Pale Moon, I have control of what gets downloaded or sent to servers.
Isn't this happening already, and if not, why not?
Amp is probably the ad tracker cdn that has been most successful.
The on-premise solution allows an easy setup of reverse proxy tracking, which isn't blockable in any way.
I know a few companies who run well known sites that use this technique and I could imagine every one with money does it like that.
[0]: https://medium.com/nextdns/cname-cloaking-the-dangerous-disguise-of-third-party-trackers-195205dc522a
[1]: https://9to5mac.comI am not a bot despite sounding like one.
I've used a 1x1 transparent image on many pages on my site for a long time, with a simple page identifier attached to the URL, such as "?index" for the main page.
This was simply for convenience in analyzing logs. If I wanted to know which of those pages were visited in the last N days, it was a simple matter at the command line to take the logs for those data and make a quick report that counted how many times that image was fetched, broken down by page identifier.
What, using tracking pixels?
There are a couple of other use-cases other than the 3rd party ID-syncing use-case without a 3rd party cookie. You can record information through one of the client-side onboarding providers on their side. Though, to be honest, they have pretty big latency.
Think again.
If you block tracking pixels you should also block the loading of external fonts. Extra bonus: fast loading pages.
Some CDN also exist for this reason.
The reason Google is hosting fonts is to make the web an attractive platform, so they can monetize you in other ways.
Recommended by privacytools.io
It annoys the crap out of me because I'd love to disable fonts for the simple reason that having every page use its own font for text is distracting. I don't need my eyes to adjust to a new font for every page. I want to pick my favorite font and only ever see that one.
On a completely unrelated note, I'll never forgive Mozilla for removing support for gopher urls in the browser.
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"I spent some time yesterday talking to a reporter yesterday"
Thanks for the post — I enjoyed it!
Safari is great if you’re a regular Mac user.
Firefox is great if you’re a dev on any platform.
Chrome is toxic evil that needs to die for the good of humanity.
Seems like Google is running the same hustle.
Just sometimes I'll go 'display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center;' and the content will end up about 5px above center. I'll be like 'WTF?' for a minute, then run it in chrome with no issue.
I only use it for those very few sites (less than 1% for sure), but not having it handy at all is just not an option.
As for my mom, luckily she hasn't had any complaints so far, so she just uses Firefox as it's what's installed by default. I certainly don't think I could train her to switch between two different browsers, though. If it came to that it would have to be Chromium full time, there.
One site that deserves a plug here is binance.com. They stopped working with Firefox a couple of months ago, but it was fixed in 2-3 days after I reported it. I guess a little healthy (heh) competition goes a long way.
V8 is a powerful runtime and has enabled some great products regardless of Google's history in areas
I still use Chrome. I don't feel the need to "justify" my use of Chrome. I like Chrome. I care about internet privacy - I use ublock origin and have JavaScript disabled by default, and only reenable it for sites I really care about.
But I don't really have strong opinions about internet browsers. I used to use Firefox, but a few years ago I started using Chrome and just found it to be better for my habits. I like the tight integration between Chrome and my Google account.
I use a Google Home and several Nest products at home (granted they're on their own VLAN). I use GSuite for my personal email, and Google domains for my domain names. Chrome is just another drop in the bucket, and I can't be bothered to change it. I also tried using other search engines, and somehow still found Google to be more helpful for me despite everyone saying DuckDuckGo has reached parity.
I guess that makes me morally compromised, or supporting a "toxic evil" or whatever, but I just don't care that much. I'm self-aware in my apathy, I guess.
Knowledge is power, just be aware of what is going on with your apps and make a judgement call for yourself. Lately I've been enjoying going to brick and mortar stores and don't go to Facebook at all. Who still uses Facebook? And if I end up seeing an ad, I don't let it ruin my day.
After the rewrite they become quite good again but you can’t blame the people that jumped ship during the dark period where it seemed like nothing was happening.
Also, denunciatory rhetoric isn't helpful and isn't interesting. Google and Google and Chrome is Chrome. Both are behemoth topics on HN. They can't be substantively reduced to "evil evil evil", though thoughtful critique is always welcome.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833134.