IE8 Will Contain an Accidental Ad Blocker 437
JagsLive sends in a Washington Post blog post reflecting on one privacy-enhancing feature of the upcoming Internet Explorer 8, the so-called "InPrivate Blocking" that has privacy advocates quietly cheering, and advertisers seriously worrying. Here is Microsoft's description of the feature. From the Post: "The advertising industry is bracing for trouble from the next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, details of which were announced today, because it will offer a feature that blocks some ads and other content from third-parties that shows up on Web pages. A Microsoft spokesman said that the feature, to be known as 'InPrivate Blocking,' was never designed to be an ad blocker, though 'there may be ads that get blocked.' Instead, it was designed to stop tracking 'pixels' or pieces of code that could allow third-party sites to track users as they move around the Web."
Re:Who the hell is drinking this cool-aid? (Score:1, Interesting)
Patent clerk
Step right up (Score:3, Interesting)
Mayb it has an "accedent"... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who the hell is drinking this cool-aid? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually no. I know plenty of non-computer people who I off hand mentioned ad blocking to. Generally the reaction is a stunned look followed by "you can do that?" and begging me to set it up for them. Most people don't even know it exists.
who do advertisers think they are? (Score:5, Interesting)
But will it block the intrusive, pop-over ads? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They just don't get it do they (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't it read a bit more like they're trying to block google analytics? Not that they're taking a direct shot at any particular company of course... maybe I'm just overly paranoid.
I don't think so. Google Analytics tracks many visitors to the same site, whereas this seems to be aimed at preventing tracking of the same visitor to many sites. In the MS blog it says it'll prevent the same cookie tracking you across more than 10 sites. I think the implication is that it's bad for Adsense, Doubleclick and the like as they can no longer track you through third-party cookies on dozens of sites and build up an advertising profile of you that way.
Good for privacy of course, but as so much of the web is ad-funded is this really going to be good for the web as a whole ? I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.
I think it's interesting also that this is happening as Microsoft tries to become a bigger player in the internet ad business. They could use IE feature to their advantage here, as it'd be fairly easy for them to implement a scheme where all third-party cookies are limited, except for those of Microsoft and its "selected partners". Would we put it past them to do something along those lines ?
Re:Who the hell is drinking this cool-aid? (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider this hypothetical example. You walk into a shopping mall. In the middle of the shopping mall, there is someone in front of a kiosk who asks you if he can record what stores you visit while you're there as part of a survey. In order to do so, he writes down a description of what you look like - not your name - but what you're wearing, your height, etc. In several of the stores throughout the mall, there are people who identify you based on this data, and record whether or not you visit a particular store. When the mall closes, the surveyors in the store report their tallies back to the kiosk. What the surveyor ends up with is a list of some of the stores you visit while you're at the mall."
How, in dogs name does he think they price mall space. I must admit though, it's a great analogy, they don't ask you on the web either!
Does it bother anyone else? (Score:3, Interesting)
I admit I do run a site myself and this sort of thing worries me. I have just two ads per page, both google ads, one leaderboard and a wide skyscraper. They aren't even remotely intrusive, and are there just to pay the bandwidth bills. For those complaining about bloated sites, my biggest page is just 10k without the ads. I'm currently a long way away from being affected by this, as 90% of my users are still using IE6, but it does concern me that I might have to shut down a free service because people can't handle two ads.
I know things like adblock are designed for really intrusive ads like those obnoxious animated overlays, but the problem is reasonable ads get blocked as well.
I wonder if there is any legal recourse for sites like Digg or companies like Google who are hurt by this sort of thing. Especially Google, as I highly doubt this whole thing is an "accident".
Re:Who the hell is drinking this cool-aid? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's true. The trick is don't be talking about security, or start talking about security. Or simply recommend ad blocking out of the blue. Keep it off-handed. The classic geek "blah-blah-Lassie-blah-blah" just spooks them. They're happy to learn ads can be blocked. Say "heck yeah" and simply show them how, end of explanation. Continue to build trust like that and they /might/ be able to handle security advice from you after two years.
But you know, don't. I don't want ad blocking to be commonplace. That'll just cause ads that are harder to block for the rest of us, and it'll make it much less likely that the greater populace will become suprised and outraged enough about uncontrolled user-tracking to demand legislation. And finally start to wonder about the lack of relevant privacy legislation for the modern world in general.
The BT debacle is kinda the start of that. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7438578.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Google anylitics killer! (Score:3, Interesting)
This has far reaching implications for all browsers. If you can't track a huge portion of the pie using google/yahoo analytics then it makes no since using 3rd party tracking software. The user in me cheers, the site administrator in me cringes.
That's why I've gone back to parsing the Apache logs. It really contains 99% of what you need: the user agent and referer. As I design for 800-1680 width screens, the user screen size does not matter to me. I use the referer to know who's linking to me, what keywords they searched from, and to know if this is a new session or not. If there is no referer then I set a cookie to track session.
The apache logs are great, and really include most of the info one needs. Tip: if you can host non-html pages (css, js, images) on a subdomain then it makes the parsing a lot easier. You don't want to account for files that were included in another page.
Re:FYI (heads up) Privoxy (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is the first time I've seen someone mention privoxy among the dozens of adblock posts.
I run privoxy on a separate machine so that it's available to every computer on my network, thereby minimising the need for installing Firefox extras. And while I'd recommend it highly (definitely a plus for over-burdened laptops when it's running elsewhere), it doesn't seem to the same job as adblock when it comes to an ad-free webpage. The Slashdot site, for example, renders with the right column being pushed down quite a distance leaving a gaping whitespace. It can be a tough choice sometimes: soul-sucking advertising, or existential emptiness.
damned if they do, damned if they don't... (Score:4, Interesting)
I can barely contain the mixed feelings I have over this issue and some of the juvenile responses. Right now I more annoyed with the Linux/Open Source/EFF advocates that can't give a simple acknowledgment to a step forward of the end-users' protection and privacy IE8 may.
One thing I can say before going back to replaying Halo 2 on my now decommissioned Beowulf cluster is, "Good job Microsoft for trying to protect 75+% of the worlds Internet users".
I am personally grateful that the users of our 1000+ Linux, Solaris, BSD server farm are better protected.
Let's remember there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some where, some how, the bill must be paid. Until socialism or communism govern the Internet some level of commercial advertising will need to be tolerated in order to pay the bill in order to keep the "lights and water" running.
--magus
(not to be confused with magu$)
Re:MS are hypocrites (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not hypocrisy. It would be hypocrisy if they said "transparent 1x1 pixel GIFs are evil and we're here to put a stop to them". If you RTFA, they say instead (paraphrased), "we think you normally want to allow transparent 1x1 pixel GIFs to track your data, but for the rare occasion when you don't such as [list that conspicuously does not include porn surfing], here's a mechanism to maintain your privacy.
The Microsoft Website (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who the hell is drinking this cool-aid? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd go one further than that. If IE8 blocks this automatically, then this type of cookie will become pretty much obsolete.
Of course something will spring up to replace it.
Why the bashing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not everyone wishes to pointblank block adverts but few people want the shady and legally quesitonable tracking techniques some ads used gathering their details, especially those that get around strict cookie rules/settings.
However I find it amusing that people still find ways to bash Microsoft over this. It's a sensible privacy feature. If you want to block ads completely, fine, we all know that firefox can do that amazingly (at least until it's widespread enough for ad providers to start making their clients use an impossible to block local caching system) but this a smart feature for those who don't wish to block ads completely.
I'd Like to see some of these features in Firefox (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Adblockers = theft (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't even need AdBlock if you have NoScript, and using NoScript is much fairer on individual sites.
With scripts disabled totally for a domain, you don't see any ads. If you enable javscript for the domain of the site you're visiting, then you still don't get pop-over ads because they always come from an another domain. This way you get the functionality of the site to work and actually help them out by preventing a third party from messing up the user experience of their site (only for you, but it's a start).
Still, I've no idea why they don't just make static images and count the requests for specific referers, and also count the times that they've been linked through. I still saw ads when they did this kind of thing, though I would've used adblock to kill that damn monkey and anything that made a noise. Nowadays we should have things like per-tab muting and a visual indication of which tab is making sound.
as long as marketers run sites... (Score:3, Interesting)
look guys...ms will cave and remove this if advertisers complain loudly enough. there is a reason why many sites are run out of the marketing department. sites are mostly for marketing and the metrics that marketers can get from users are the primary reasons why they run sites.
it's this simple...if Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot had a tool that would allow them to see every book their citizens read, every item their citizens bought, or everything that was done, they would have retained absolute power over their populaces.
this is what marketers are attempting to do. create a dominance over you that television, newspaper, or any other medium has never been able to do before.
Re:Adblockers = theft (Score:3, Interesting)
*yawn* Ridiculous.
Theft is theft. Advertising is advertising. Adblocking is adblocking. Blocking ads is not theft, advertising is not theft (as a responder to you tried to claim), and asking you if have the time is not theft.
If I don't want your ads sent down my line, I'm perfectly free to block them. If you don't like the fact that ads can be blocked, you're perfectly free to charge for your content, or take it down.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not Ad Blocking, Tracking Blocking... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm almost certain I'll get called a Google fanboy (or maybe even a shill) for this comment, but here goes...
Google's style of advertising is the ONLY advertising I'm interested in seeing, precisely BECAUSE it tracks me and specifically targets me. They offer ads that are RELEVANT to me - things I actually MIGHT be interested in. If I don't want them to track me, I'll tweak the relevant settings in my browser's settings/plugins. I'm quite happy for Google to do so though (just recently, after I received an email about a new card I'm playing with some friends, I was given a nice text ad on the top of my gmail that linked me to an online version of the game - excellent advertising, because it's something I actually wanted!)
A shot at Google Adwords (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They just don't get it do they (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They just don't get it do they (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like those Dice ads that Slashdot was displaying forever even though I emailed them repeatedly and told them it was crashing my browser and slowing down my computer?
Re:They just don't get it do they (Score:2, Interesting)
Re-Blocking? (Score:1, Interesting)
So let me get this straight:
Microsoft IE8 will be able to block the ads my ISP has injected in place of the original site ads?
That's got a nice touch of irony.
On the other hand, maybe the ISP's will see such a huge drop in revenue they'll drop their ad-injectors outright.
Not that I'd notice, I've got my ISP's ad sources set to reject at my router. ya ya I could drop them but it's more fun to let them hammer their own ad server and my bandwidth isn't metered.
Anything that doesn't get hijacked by my ISP gets blocked by a few simple packet filters on my network, and I run noscript in Firefox. Honestly I've never bothered with Adblocker since the 1% that still make it through really don't bother me.
Re:They just don't get it do they (Score:3, Interesting)