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They want to have push/local notifications. It's like getting ahold of an email, but moreso. I've turned off Javascript to avoid them asking, now I constantly get "turn on your javascript" black overlays from Wordpress sites. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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Oh, their motives are clear... It's the fact that they are doing absolutely nothing to entice the user to go through the inconvenience.

This won't last.

I certainly hope it won't last! But there isn't a large downside to angering the few of us that were just passing by.

My dream is having some AdBlock-style filters for misbehaving websites, run by tens of thousands of people. Then we could nip these practices in the bud.

There's not much stopping you from making exactly that. The main issue is that iOS devices won't allow users to install that sort of modification, and it doesn't look like newer iOS devices are going to be jailbroken any time soon. Older devices though, sure.

They also get unique identifiers for users. Yes the GUID is banned, but developers just use the devices MAC address instead.

Google analytics gives unique ids.

Until the cookies are cleared. MAC addresses are globally unique and completely unchangeable on iOS devices.

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