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0 pointsefficax5y ago0 comments

You could already use random URLs to serve ads and track, not sure how a bundle changes anything

0 comments

Serving ads or doing tracking from random URLs doesn't work with extensions like uBlock Origin.

In Firefox, uBO can block first party domains: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780

Also domain or URL blocking isn't the only thing you can do. You can also ban scripts from the page, or monkey patch JavaScript to change behavior that ad networks rely on. And you can also do cosmetic ads blocking, to hide elements from the page, via user stylesheets.

It's no wonder that Google is deprecating the APIs uBlock Origin relies on, in Manifest v3 ;-)

Fact of the matter is Google is now engaged in war against ad-blocking.

efficaxOP5y ago

Again I don't get it. If a site wants to they can serve ads inline right now, without making client side requests to ad servers and ublock can't do anything about it. And first party cookies don't do any good for tracking so it doesn't matter if they come in the bundle. The ad trackers want to see where you go across multiple sites and there's no simple way to do that w/out 3rd party cookies (although you can use browser fingerprinting)

otterley5y ago

Browsers like Safari are increasingly enabling privacy features that, among other techniques, block third party cookies by default. So this could be Google’s way of reacting to this change.

geofft5y ago

I don't see how. Web bundles don't affect whether a cookie is considered third-party or not. Either the content is provided and signed by the actual website, which cannot place cookies for the advertiser's domain, or it's provided and signed by the advertiser, at which point it would be subject to blocking just like normal web traffic from the advertiser. Is this any different with bundles?

jlokier5y ago

The third-party cookie will be blocked, but when both sites are served via the same proxy server, over the same TLS/QUIC connection, the third-party can get similar tracking information they would have had with a cookie, without needing a cookie. It's not exact, but it's good enough for inference.

1 more reply

detaro5y ago

How do bundles "help" with third-party cookies?

sp3325y ago

Normally, if you load a page from Party A which pulls in content from Party B, it's hard for them to correlate who you are because they have separate cookies. That's not a problem if they're served from the same host, probably even on the same QUIC connection.

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