Facebook's Atlas: the Platform For Advertisers To Track Your Movements 92
An anonymous reader writes In its most direct challenge to Google yet, Facebook plans to sell ads targeted to its 1.3 billion users when they are elsewhere on the Web. The company is rolling out an updated version of Atlas that will direct ads to people on websites and mobile apps. From the article: "The company said Atlas has been rebuilt 'from the ground up' to cater for today's marketing needs, such as 'reaching people across devices and bridging the gap between online impressions and offline purchases.'"
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The default for AdBlock Plus is to allow some of the well-behaved ads through, so that users who like to support their favourite sites can do so in an unobtrusive way. It's easy to change - there's a checkbox on the dialog when you click on Filter Preferences to allow / disallow this. It's a reasonable compromise, and if everyone used this to only allow ads that don't behave badly, advertisers and their ad distribution networks would have to make their ads behave better.
Blocking all ads, on the other hand
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Blocking all ads, on the other hand, gives them no incentive to change.
Good. Let the dinosaurs die in peace.
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Just out of curiosity, what's your ideal theoretical end-game once that happens? How exactly would people pay for servers, bandwidth, IT workers, content creators, site designers, site developers, electricity, the accounts payable and receivable person, the backup service, and the janitor?
Would you prefer to have all content be pay content, with pay-per-click or subscription schemes for all of the stuff you want?
Should advertising be so closely intertwined with the content that it's basically an infomercial
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Advertising would be OK if it weren't so intrusive (tracking counts as intrusive) and/or obnoxious. That people loathe online advertising is because advertisers have behaved so incredibly badly. They've dug their own grave here.
I am also old enough to remember when the internet had very little advertising. Almost all services were just free outright (mostly run on a hobbyist basis or as a sideline to an established business or educational institution) or you paid money. There was no dearth of content in tho
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I'd actually be pretty happy to pay a small subscription to websites that I use all the time, and that seem to be worth it. Of course, there are a lot of websites that would die very quickly without advertising, and I don't object to that at all. They can go, and that is fine.
I think a reasonable subscription to a website I really like would be something like a $1 to $1.50 a month. If enough people are paying, that can easily cover the costs.
Of course I'd rather have those websites supported by voluntary do
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My ideal endgame is an ad-free world, but that's probably a utopian dream. A little while a go, there was an article about how much each Internet user would have to pay on a yearly basis for all ads, tracking cookes etc. to be eliminated. It was only a couple hundred dollars, I would gladly pay that to be completely free from ads online.
If advertising on a site starts getting too intrusive or annoying, I stop using that site, simple as that. Mind you, they'd have to get through Adblock, Privacy Badger, Disc
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The default for AdBlock Plus is to allow some of the well-behaved ads through
I use the combination of NoScript and hosts file blocking rather than AdBlock Plus, so forgive my ignorance here... but what does the AdBlock Plus people consider "well-behaved"? For me, it would mean ads that engage in no tracking whatsoever.
if everyone used this to only allow ads that don't behave badly, advertisers and their ad distribution networks would have to make their ads behave better.
Blocking all ads, on the other hand, gives them no incentive to change.
Again, what is "well-behaved"? I can't tell which is which without analyzing network traffic to see which ads are reporting on me, so I must treat all ads as ill-behaved as a matter of self-protection, and block them all. Period. Without exception.
I simply pay money di
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Today's list is here [adblockplus.org]. Just look for all lines starting with an exclamation mark - they'll tell you the intent of the following lines.
Of course, you're free to edit it to your preferences and restart the browser.
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Why not just go to their site. Or if you install it, you can look at the list of "nice rules".
Today's list is here [adblockplus.org].
I can't find where they define what constitutes a "well-behaved" site, but from the list you pointed me to, it's clear they we tremendously disagree about who is well-behaved.
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It's not hard at all, but it's even easier is to just use different methods that better fit my needs (and don't require further configuration out of the box just to plug holes intentionally built into the system.)
I wasn't criticizing AdBlock Plus, you know. I was just asking how it worked to determine fitness for purpose. I wanted to know what they considered "well-behaved". I still don't know, but I've learned enough to know that they and I disagree on the definition, since they include many badly-behaved
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Unplug plug-in (Score:1)
http://www.abine.com/index.htm... [abine.com]
I'm sure Facebook is diligently working to bypass this attempt of people to maintain their privacy, along with all others, but it's notably better than nothing.
NEWS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Install noscripit, turn off all scripts. Go to a popular website. It probably won't work. Start allowing scripts. Eventually, the website should appear in all it's glorious tracky glory.
Now look at how many trackers you've enabled. Now look at how many are from facebook.
Re:NEWS? (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience very few of those trackers are actually required for the site to function.
If you're using something you can selectively disallow, you can usually get it to work no problem. If I can't, I leave.
So far, my best combination in Chrome is DoNotTrackMe, Scriptsafe, Ghostery, AdBlockPlus, HTTP SwitchBoard, and Disconnect.
HTTP Switchboard gives really good granularity and also does script and cookie blocking, plus several other things.
So far I've confirmed Safari has had the blocking of 3rd party cookies implemented incompetently, worked around, and never updated ... so that's the least trustworthy browser I've found.
Firefox has some good add-ons, can selectively block cookies NoScript, DoNotTrackMe, AdBlockPlus, Ghostery and Disconnect ... but I've not found anything with the granularity of HTTP Switchboard, so I suspect web-bugs can still slip by some of them.
I really wish Mozilla hadn't caved and decided not to implement strong blocking of crap ... unfortunately their desire for ad revenue trumped making a browser which could actually be made more private.
IE, well ... treat IE like the thing you use for work when all else fails. Because there's always another exploit around the corner.
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Meh, I don't recall ever having much of a problem with IE. On the topic, there is a whole "tracking protection" section under IE accelerators. I block most all of it with these 4 easy to add addons:
http://easylist-msie.adblockpl... [adblockplus.org]
http://easylist-msie.adblockpl... [adblockplus.org]
http://www.privacychoice.org/t... [privacychoice.org]
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdr... [microsoft.com]
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I do not know what sites you go to, but for me basically everything (the exceptions are in the low single digits) works with Ghostery on.
And this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why all of the browsers I don't use for Facebook do not accept cookies from Facebook, do not allow them to set cookies, and in a few cases do not even allow traffic to them.
The amount of embedded crap in every page you visit is mind-boggling.
Every company wants to link to Facebook and as a result, Facebook pretty much knows everywhere you go.
The only way I trust Facebook is in a heavily locked down browser, which isn't used for anything else.
And, even then, I wouldn't trust Facebook as far as I could throw Zuckerfuck off a cliff ... and then won't let me measure that distance so far.
If your browser doesn't have at least 3 privacy extensions, you're handing all of this information over to these clowns to collect your data and do targeted marketing.
Just deny them the information and the ability to meaningfully know anything about you.
I block every advertising and analytics company I can find ... and it's bad enough that Slashdot on this page as I type has scorecard research, google analytics, google ad services, and whatever the heck RPX now is. Fortunately, they're all blocked.
I miss the internet before all of the assholes who want to advertise, monetize, track, correlate, and cross reference. But I'm sure as hell not going to let them get any information I can block from them.
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I use a fake last name on Facebook and a fake birthday and there are zero pictures of me on it. You, on the other hand, are completely going about things the wrong way.
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I have a completely fake name, fake information which Facebook sees, and no pictures of me. I wasn't about to give them anything real. Almost nothing in my profile is true, and it will stay that way.
But I access Facebook from exactly one browser, which isn't used for anything else. It has exactly one web site with cookies set, and that's Facebook.
Ever other browser blocks traffic from Facebook, rejects cookies, and generally treats it as a completely untrusted site.
If you're visiting other sites while yo
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I wonder how long this will last. There will come a point where FB can't sell any more info than it is getting. Then what do they do?
I've found that FB is pretty intrusive, asking for almost every permission but root on my Android device. On my computer, it gets its own sandboxed instance of a browser (using sandboxie), while everything else is separate. On Android, XPrivacy and the privacy tools in CyanogenMod mitigate things. iOS is much harder to keep info away (although with a jailbreak and Protect
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Sell your demographic info to the highest Nigerian Scam bidder
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I actually created a dedicated virutual machine for my Facebook presence (back when I had one.) Unfortunately, I triggered their bad behavior filters by using Tor. This is a known issue but I hadn't thought to research the use of Tor with Facebook before doing it. I could have gotten access to my account restored if I followed their rigamarole to prove my identtity (despite the fact that friends had tagged me in pictures) but I went of in a huff saying "I will not be treated like a criminial!"
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I use FF mostly, and have all the tracking blockers you've mentioned installed and configured to only allow what I deem "non-Big-Brother-esque". That means BOTH Google and FB are blocked. TrackMeNot, RequestPolicy, NoScript and AdBlock Plus are the way to go.
hmmm (Score:3)
I'm feeling pretty good about having quit Facebook. It's more difficult for them to track me if I'm not a participant.
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Think so? Because I don't.
Almost every commercial web page has embedded links to Facebook. Which means they're probably still tracking you anyway, they just can't correlate it to a specific Facebook users.
Unless you have a lot of privacy extensions, you might be surprised just how much tracking happens on every site you visit via web-bugs, cross-site crap, and several other things.
Simply not being logged into Facebook isn't really stopping them from getting at least some data unless you've taken other ste
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You don't actually need any privacy extensions to block the likes of Facebook tracking. A couple of entries in your hosts file does the trick.
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If you once had a Facebook account, you still have it. And it will be there until the end of times* + forever.
* I'm counting parallel universes and big crunch/big bang loops.
How to escape Zuckerberg's peeping? (Score:1)
Firefox addon (Score:2)
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Firewall their IP addresses (Score:4, Informative)
Depending which part of the planet you're in, most of your FB tracking attempts will come from one of the blocks below. Firewall them all to be safe.
31.13.24.0 - 31.13.31.255
31.13.24.0/21
IE-FACEBOOK-20110418
Facebook Ireland Ltd
IE
31.13.64.0 - 31.13.127.255
31.13.64.0/18
IE-FACEBOOK-20110418
Facebook Ireland Ltd
IE
66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255
66.220.144.0/20
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255
69.63.176.0/20
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255
69.171.224.0/19
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
74.119.76.0 - 74.119.79.255
74.119.76.0/22
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
103.4.96.0 - 103.4.99.255
103.4.96.0/22
FACEBOOK-SG
173.252.64.0 - 173.252.127.255
173.252.64.0/18
AS32934
FACEBOOK-INC
204.15.20.0 - 204.15.23.255
204.15.20.0/22
Facebook, Inc.
THEFA-3
Keep it up, Zuck.... (Score:2)
How anyone would connect to FB these days without running every privacy filter under the sun is just baffling to me. It's bad enough that FB tracks everything you do when you're using the app. But now they want to track everything out do OUTSIDE the app as well? No thanks.
I read with interest about new sites like this --> https://ello.co/beta-public-pr... [ello.co]
Ok...it's still in Beta, and it's invitation only so far, and the functionality is pretty sparse. But for people that just want to connect with friends
Awfully nice of them (Score:2)
Atlas' website kindly lists all of the companies currently using Atlas. I'm pleased, because now I have a much more complete list of which services to completely avoid.
Facebook... privacy...concerns,,, (Score:2)
Swap these words around for a well-worn Slashdot article (bonus if you score two hits in a day)
Pointless? (Score:1)