Hacker News Reader

Comment by Imerso | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that this can be a problem for the webpages you visit, see that the point of the extension is:

" [...] to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from surveillance and tracking by advertising networks."

So while it may be a negative side effect the point of the extension is not disrupting online advertisement, but disrupting online tracking. Even though you will be effectively doing both.

View on HN

Can someone explain now clicking an ad link prevents tracking?

It's explained on the site. If every ad is clicked by everyone, tracking data is useless.

No, it isn't. Ad networks would have a clearer picture of sites that people visit (albeit a muddier picture of ad preferences).

Clearer picture? I think just loading the ad is enough info for finding out what sites are visited. This just makes clicks less valuable.

Not sure what might be the exact point. I mean while that would make useless extracting information about your add clicking habits, they would still know what webpages you visit. So it may be counterproductive compared with a normal ad blocker.

I too am a little confused on that score. The advertisers continue to know your interests (i.e. the sites you visit) and can build a demographic picture of you based on that.

The only thing this deprives them of is your ad preferences. But given how few ads most people click on, this information is sparse regardless.

I think those devs think fhat it obfuscates data about you, data gathered about you in ad network does not match your real preferences so it is effectively useless. So it does not prevent tracking but it just cheats the system.

Don't know why they assume extension should click all links, clicking random ads would be much better strategy if you ask me, this would be less likely to be detected as it mirrors actual users behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com