Hacker News Reader

Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

Add this to your /etc/hosts

   127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
   127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
   127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com

View on HN

Confirmed with WireShark. This app is a GUI around YIFY.

The binary you download from Mega.co.nz uses "YIFY Torrents" website yts.re exclusively. Github code seems to be actually used. So it all runs via this single webserver (+Google analytics). Just to verify what a installed binary blob does on your Linux box. The ease of use is impressive, a new level for P2P-ish work since Napster/Kazaa/Limewire days.

I use SomeoneWhoCares.org:

   curl http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Well that's an incredibly dangerous command to run without thinking.

Just curious about what could go wrong (assuming I've quickly skimmed the file)?

Quickly skimming the file no longer counts as "running without thinking" but even then, if the server sent a different file to browsers than it does to curl...

Obviously. But then it's incredibly dangerous to run any command posted online without thinking; at least this one is easy to understand and verify.

Given the demographic of this site, I thought I'd be insulting everyone's intelligence by offering up a more verbose description. I mean the description is the command itself! And verifying the contents of the URL is as simple as viewing a web page (if anyone can't manage that then I wonder how they're reading that command to begin with :p).

Not nearly as dangerous as `curl <URL> | sh`

With `curl http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts`, you know that the damage is contained to appending malicious data to /etc/hosts. Furthermore, the use of tee guarentees that you see the data that gets appended. Additionally the potential damage of malicious data in /etc/hosts is minimal if quickly detected and fixed.

FYI, the google analytics lines are commented out in that source, as it "breaks some sites". So your command doesn't help in this case until you uncomment those lines.

Noooooooooo (An analytics junkie)

Convince your customers to use self-hosted analytics software instead. Of course you understand the danger of a single entity (google-analytics.com) tracking almost every website you visit.

I block it with Ghostery.

Have you ever tried setting up Piwik? It's terrible software.

My opinion is different to yours.

Piwik with Nginx was easy enough to set up and provides the data I am interested in, including conversions of goals (something I was dubious about before installing). New version even more snazzy than previous.

Setting up this server-side software requires GUI configuration. That's insane. The code looks nightmarish.

I'm sure it's fine from a functional perspective.

I'm pretty sure I'm screwed when it comes to Google tracking me, between Chrome, Gmail, Google.com, etc... Analytics is the least of my worries.

And google.com too?

Take it out. Node-webkit is just a bunch of JS files, just go to that directory and remove it then continue on with your day.

What danger are GET requests to google.com?

Websockets to google.com can be opened by iframes in your browsing to report your internet usage for google advertisements.

Naturally this will also block you using google.

Its more of drastic stop tracking me measurement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com