Posted on 07/21/2014 4:55:16 PM PDT by Theoria
A new kind of tracking tool, canvas fingerprinting, is being used to follow visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.
First documented in a forthcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium, this type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a hidden image. Because each computer draws the image slightly differently, the images can be used to assign each user’s device a number that uniquely identifies it.
Like other tracking tools, canvas fingerprints are used to build profiles of users based on the websites they visit — profiles that shape which ads, news articles, or other types of content are displayed to them.
But fingerprints are unusually hard to block: They can’t be prevented by using standard Web browser privacy settings or using anti-tracking tools such as AdBlock Plus.
The researchers found canvas fingerprinting computer code, primarily written by a company called AddThis, on 5 percent of the top 100,000 websites. Most of the code was on websites that use AddThis’ social media sharing tools. Other fingerprinters include the German digital marketer Ligatus and the Canadian dating site Plentyoffish. (A list of all the websites on which researchers found the code is here).
Rich Harris, chief executive of AddThis, said that the company began testing canvas fingerprinting earlier this year as a possible way to replace “cookies,” the traditional way that users are tracked, via text files installed on their computers.
“We’re looking for a cookie alternative,” Harris said in an interview.
Harris said the company considered the privacy implications of canvas fingerprinting before launching the test, but decided “this is well within the rules and regulations and laws and policies that we have.”
(Excerpt) Read more at propublica.org ...
There are a great many people who simply cannot ENDURE to mind their own business.
Impossible until some 14 year old nerd comes along and blocks it!!
very likely
I get so much ad ware at places like “The Daily Caller” it almost stops my computer.
I don't know what the daily unique hit count is for Free Republic.
The source I looked at just gives “rank,” but hides the actual numbers behind a pay wall.
We need $1,000 a day in ad revenue to replace Freepathons.
I have to believe that 100,000 unique visitors a day would generate that easily.
But, Free Republic would lose some of its political autonomy.
If we shifted to ad funding, that means our sponsors become vulnerable to boycotts if outsiders get upset about the frank comments and frequent ridicule of the Left that often appear in these pages.
Excellent advice.
Thank you.
For some advertisers that isn't a bug, it's a feature. My target market is small businesses and the self-employed who work from home, who tend to be conservative or libertarian. My experience has been that leftist customers tend to be disorganized, lacking a viable business plan and slow to pay. It would therefore be to my benefit to advertise on FR in an unobtrusive fashion. It is for those reasons that I spend some time every day liberal-baiting on Twitter, because retweeting hate messages sent my way gains me conservative followers and generates traffic at my website. I've only been actively posting there for a week and the hate mail sent my follower count from 5 to 63.
That is elegantly devious, Squawk.
I’d like to take a look at your website.
Please send the link, either here or via FR mail.
Thanks.
You have mail :)
I have no qualms about my identity becoming available here by posting a link, I just don’t want to spam a thread by linking a website for my own business.
It isn’t just the advertising, it’s the complete lack of ebedded videos (just the URLs) and all sorts of annoying javascripts that slow down page loads.
I wouldn’t read the majority of articles in media today if I had to travel to each of the source websites. Too many of them get bogged down loading their additional content.
“Just the facts, ma’am.” - Joe Friday
The lobbyists paid Congress to rule it doesn’t violate your privacy. This was done in the 1980s.
Harry Reid and other Democrats defend it today saying that the junk mail elderly people receive (with its heartfelt begging letters for po’ indian chil’run and free name labels for envelopes) is the ONLY contact some of them have with the outside world.
Can FR even ACCEPT sponsored advertising and still use media content the way it does as a non-commercial entity (user sponsored)?
The Amazon “book” list (which could simply be a link to some moderated list hosted at Amazon of relevant book and video titles) may be the only option that avoids that charge.
Check out Panopticlick. What for, cookies‽
That’s a great question.
I know we are covered by “the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.”
Just where the legal “red line” falls between fair use and having to pay for content is something I don’t know.
Back when I thought I could be the next blog-o-sphere sensation, I used Piwik with WordPress. It worked very nicely. It’s been too long for me to remember exactly which WordPress plugin I used for Piwik integration, but I think it might have been this:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-piwik/
Depending on what your setup is, it may take a little elbow grease to roll your own Piwik installation. It was dead simple for me at the time because my Web host included a feature called Softaculous that did one-click installs of many popular programs including WordPress and Piwik.
“Suggest to John Robinson that he switch from GA to Piwik.”
Hey, why not? Well, I’m not sure about John Robinson, but Jim might be willing to listen! :P
Jim, I love this site, but it bothers me that FR uses Google Analytics. I completely understand the desire to understand your audience, but by using a Google service, you may inadvertently be feeding information to Big Data and quite possibly the NSA.
If at all practical, I suggest investigating an alternative analytics system like Piwik that can be operated in-house.
Pinging John.
Pinging John.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
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