The Murky World of Third Party Web Tracking

technologyreview.com

15 pointssrikar3 comments

I've been using EFF's "Privacy Badger" to try to cut down on this, with fairly good results (it doesn't break too many things): https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

The basic idea is that it can either fully allow a third-party image/script, allow the load but block third-party cookies, or block it entirely. There are some history-based heuristics (can be overridden) to figure out which makes most sense.

HN discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789350, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7684287

I use DNS to block this sort of stuff (doubleclick.net, googleapis.com, etc.). *.doubleclick.net, etc. redirect to a a socket logger so I can see what is being requested.

This is easy for me to do because I run my own DNS root.

I also use DNS in order to log requests from devices that phone home (e.g., Apple).

Have you by chance written up how you have implemented that? I suspect there are existing examples of such setups online, but it never hurts to have another, particularly if your implemtation is different in some way. I would be interested to see your setup described in more detail.

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