I’ve noticed it glaring at me.
Is that what you are referring to?
Maybe a lower SPF?
ADblock software is your first defense against malvertising, recently within the last six months, malware was able to be injected via the ads that the straight dope displays, so much that the ads were turned off within a matter of hours, until what ever got rectified.
I dont particularly like ads, as I think they are simply a legacy tv business plan, thats been grafted onto the web. Like any other input, if its affecting existing businesses, then they will adapt to something new.
Declan
Yeah, after reading the wikipedia article, I already knew about that (though I didn’t know the exact name) and I don’t see what there is to be scared about. It’s literally just a way for people to check that you saw a webpage/ad and I use them on my own websites. It shows me who is visiting, what browser they’re using, what operating system, where they got the link to my page, how long they spent looking at my stuff, etc. All completely normal stuff you need to know to find out how useful your website is and if it’s working for all your users. Without it I wouldn’t know about issues or changing trends that I need to change my website to adapt to. Of course if you’re scared by somebody knowing that you live in a city on planet earth and use a computer to get on the internet, well I don’t know what to say. I think we all expected that to be the case.
If you ran an auto parts business you’d sure as hell want to know which were the most popular cars on the market last year so you could be sure to have enough parts in stock for when they get in accidents. Same thing.
You use the spyware, pay for it and base decisions on the data it mines yet you don’t know its name.
You don’t need to know what my IP is, my email address, the computer I use, the typefaces it contains, whether it will run JavaScript, whether it will run Java, the system it’s running and whatever else your goddamn spyware can tell you.
You don’t need to know whether I, Kenm, personally, saw your webpage. Who the hell are you to know that?
It seems “normal” to you only because you and most other people are desensitized to the information they give away, or they have given up trying to prevent its flow into your bank account. They’re being spied upon all the time, from their own governments to penny ante web sites.
What difference does it make to know whether I’m running a Mac, Windows or Linux? Why should it matter to you which website I was at before I landed on yours? (I block all referrers, because it’s none of your goddamned business, despite your claiming it is.)
Do you have different web pages with different prices for the same article for different users? Do you list higher prices for Mac users? Do you have more do-it-yourself pages for Linux users? Quite possibly. Why else would you care to know the brand of my computer?
You’d claim it “normal” if I bought a newspaper or magazine off a rack and the cashier demanded the answers to those same questions before I could take it out of the store, because what’s the difference?
The difference is I could tell the clerk to fuck off. On the internet, I can’t.
I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you want to know about me or what you claim is “normal” to know about me and to spy on me to gain it. You are not the Stasi nor the NSA, no matter how much you believe you are entitled to know. I don’t care if you go tits up.
If it’s so “normal,” I suggest you phone the NSA and tell it what toilet paper you use, how successful your out-patient treatments are and that you love its work so much you voluntarily added a key-logger to your computer that phones home to the NSA every hour with the latest data on your life. That’s certainly normal for the NSA.
That’s not the point, and you bloody know it. You, yourself, listed only some of the information you glean from anyone unfortunate enough to click on your site.
If I was armed with a clipboard and pen and I barged into your home to demand all the information from you that you get from anyone on your website, you’d shoot me or have me arrested.
That’s absurd.
If you don’t know the brands of cars that are most popular, spying on me won’t tell you. Having your eyes examined would.
You want to know the brand of computer I have, the typefaces it contains, whether it can run Java and JavaScript, whether it’s running JavaScript and Java now, my ISP, the site I came from when I landed on yours (an obstetrician’s, a cancer site, a dentist’s site, the New York Times site, a porn site, a competitor’s site, the income-tax department’s site, a prison site), my email address, my name, my age, my gender, how many kids I might have, my spouse’s name, my spouse’s age and what I had for breakfast, if it was possible to find out, and it is. All this so you can stock car parts in case I have an accident.
Gee. Thanks for caring so much about me. I’m overwhelmed.
It’s passing strange that in the age of the internet, General Motors, once the most profitable company on Earth, went bankrupt. I guess it didn’t have the grille for a '62 Pontiac in stock.
Erm, every object on every website you’ve ever visited tracks all of this information right into the Web server log. All of it.
The only way I could *not *know all of this information about visitors to my site is to turn off Web server logging, which I’m not going to do.
“Web bugs” have been around since forever and are dead easy to implement. So everyone everywhere uses them, and yes so do spammers. Spammers ruin everything we all already use anyway, so why get so freaked out about this particular thing?
Because my life is none of your goddamned business, whether the means to know it has been around for a hundred years or never.
Let me put it this way. My website is my personal space, bought and paid for by me. Within law I can set whatever rules I like in my space. Just like as though you visited a retail store, they can set whatever rules they like within law. When you walk in that door, i.e. click that link, you’re basically agreeing to follow my rules. If you don’t like them, your only recourse is leaving. The problem here is that you’re objecting to a practice that is both benign and is used by the vast majority of websites and the overwhelming majority of business websites. So in order to boycott this practice you’d essentially need to stay off the internet entirely.
To me this is like saying you’re not going to a retail store because you’re afraid that the store manager will see your face and realize you’re (gender), (age), and (buying something). Or that the manager might ask you, “So, how did you hear about our sale? Newspaper? Cool, thanks for letting me know.”
For the record, I do not pay for this service. It’s offered free by several companies. It’s usually called a “tracker” because that’s literally what it does. Here is an example of what sort of data is collected. The list on the left are the types of data I can look at. It never goes closer than a city name (and even that is usually incorrect many times since ISPs don’t give you customer IP addresses but their own upper level addresses). The list on the right is an example of what I would see in the “Recent Came From” data set. (please note this is not my website but an image pulled from google image search).
I actually do need to know many of the things you listed so that I can see if my website is being found by search engines, if the page is not displaying correctly to people, if redirects and links are working properly, if I left a junk page laying around by accident, if someone has stolen my content for another website that links to mine, if people are using the links in my twitter account, if people are just plain confused by the layout, if my target market is finding my website, if I have a new market opening up internationally, if they find my content interesting and read my website for hours or don’t and leave immediately, or if they like it so much they keep coming back.
As you can see the majority of that is actually used for optimizing the website for the end user. So people can find the website, use the website, and see the website with zero issues.
Let me point out that the information gathered by trackers is publicly available. There’s no hacking or anything involved, your computer makes this information publicly known. You may not personally know how to access it, but it’s there and it’s as normal as having a face on your body and wearing clothes when you go outside. Anybody can look your way and say, “Hey, nice red shirt. You drove a porsche here?” just like anybody can look your computer’s way and say, “Hey, nice firefox browser. You using Windows 8?”
If you go into a store, the staff know what you look like, what you’re wearing, and how much you spend. Do you demand that everyone look away from you every time you pick up groceries?
I’m ambivalent about adblock, but this struck me as strangely contrasting with:
Most websites are just as publicly available as the browser information you mention. If browser data is okay to use because it is publicly available, wouldn’t it also follow that visitors to your website needn’t follow any rules at all, and your only recourse is catching and banning them? That is to say, if you can morally collect their information without explicitly telling them, can they morally collect any information your server will offer, without regard to your desire for that information to be accessible? I’m not sure that availability should imply a moral right in either case.
Yes, they can. You can do a WHOIS on any website you desire. You can see what system a website server is running, see when it was put together, see what API it uses, see what software it uses, see what version its using, see what code the website was built on, even go in and copy the whole website code for yourself. Nobody need know that you gathered this public information. It’s a plain fact of being on the internet that all this software and hardware needs to tell each other what it is and what it’s doing or none of it will work. It’s not a question of morals. From my end, all I can do is block an IP address from looking at my website. Otherwise, a visitor is free to collect any public information they want.
I know that. I also know that the law is an ass. I don’t care if you bought and paid for the spyware. I don’t care if it’s free. What does that have to do with the fact you are spying? It’s spyware.
If I visit your web page, it’s because the front door is open, but I’d bet the farm you run software protecting the back door, as well as your privacy. Why? According to you, we’re all one happy family with nothing to hide. It’s in your interest to defend your spying.
No, I’m not. The door is open. The windows are open. There’s a blinking neon arrow on the lawn pointing to your open doors and windows. I’m looking in.
I don’t agree with your rule that might state by clicking on your site I agree to kick kittens and must do so within the next five minutes. Even if your “rules” were posted on the site, I couldn’t read them until after I clicked on the link. I emphatically do not agree that you should know my ISP, the make of my machine, my machine’s name and all the rest.
No, it isn’t, whether you like it or not. To the extant I can, I will prevent you from knowing it, and if you don’t like it, it’s up to you to lock your door against me. The Straight Dope locks its doors against users who don’t agree all the time.
If it’s benign, why track? Why spy? Any advantage you gain is to my detriment. I don’t want you to know my approximate income. I don’t want you to know I’m running Brand X machine and the inferences you can make from that. You can then sell all the information you gain from me and all the others who may visit your site, and profit from it. I demand at least 50 per cent you earn from my information! It’s my info, not yours.
Merely because a majority kicks kittens doesn’t mean you have to kick kittens. Merely because every bank robber robs banks doesn’t mean you have to rob banks.
No, I don’t. I do what I can to foil your spying. I acknowledge it’s not nearly enough, though. I’m considering a VPN, for instance. And I can avoid your site. What’s its URL?
I am not afraid.
All of that is up to me, not the manager. I choose to divulge it by going to the store. The manager hasn’t peered though my bedroom window to learn it. The manager can ask for all he wants, but I can refuse to tell him. I can’t when I visit your site. You extort the information. Despite my knowledge that you are doing so, you are still extorting it. I block it if I can.
You should not object to my seeing all your information that you glean from me. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Whois shows practically nothing about you. Link to your server. Link to your personal computer so I can draw an inference as to your income. I also want to see if its a Windows box, its OS and how easy or difficult it would be to compromise it. I want to see not only your IP address. I want to see all the offbeat fonts you might have and so whether you spent money to get them. Show me the last website you visited; I might strike it lucky if it was your bank.
As if I didn’t know.
I want all the information about you, posted on your website, that you’d gain from me. And I want a link to that page you posted so I can click on the links, not have to wonder what they contain; you aren’t illustrating how benign the information is. You are illustrating how to hide the information that isn’t at all benign because I can’t click the links. I want to track you across the net. Give me a tracker, a supercookie with your information on it so I can follow you and know all your financial transactions and with whom, from now until the second coming. I mean, jeez, it’s benign!
Why a Google image search? Why are you hiding the benign information about your own, personal website? I don’t want a picture. I want a link to the info that *you *gather. After all, it’s benign.
A simple counter would tell you that.
You haven’t tested it?
You haven’t clicked your own links?
You spy on me to tell you that?
You spy on me to see if the previous page I was on was stolen from you? Or if I stole it from you?
Ask Twitter. Oh, it won’t tell you, because that would be a breach of its privacy, especially monetarily, just as you break mine by knowing the page I came from.
How does spying on me tell you that? if I’m confused by your layout, how does knowing my ISP and brand of machine inform you that the page is a dog’s beakfast?
Ah, now were getting somewhere. You need to know my approximate (at least) income, therefor my age, to know if I’m in your target audience, and you have to spy to get it because you know I and most of the public wouldn’t tell you voluntarily. So you extort it.
So, you wouldn’t know you have international customers from the addresses they leave — voluntarily?
Page counters wouldn’t tell you whether people clicked on your pages? A timer wouldn’t tell you the length of time people stayed on a page?
I don’t see it. You are rationalizing your use of spyware. ISP identity has nothing to do with whether your pages resolve. My computer’s name has nothing to do with it, either. Laziness has plenty to do with it, though. The names of typefaces that run and are divulged only with Flash turned on or only with JavaScript turned on, especially when the page is built so that it shows up only with JavaScript turned on, has plenty to do with it.
What has your spying on me have to do with me finding your website? Referrals, I assume, so you can place links on a referred page, gleaned from spying on me.
Evident zero issues.
Hmmm.
I’m trying to put this in a way that’s easy to understand. Your browser MUST give my server information, or my server CANNOT serve you a webpage. The internet cannot work without two-way information. Your browser HAS to say whether it accepts javascript or not, it HAS to say what resolution it’s running at, it HAS to say what type of browser it is, etc, or my server CANNOT serve it a webpage to see. That’s the basic underpinnings of the internet. This information passes between the browser and the server just by accessing them. Period. There is absolutely no way around this. All the information I get through a tracker is a requirement for internet browsing to work.
Your only problem seems to be that I have a little robot sitting there keeping track of all the information your browser and my server says to each other for future reference.
You do not understand what exact information I can get from that, and I understand that it’s sort of scary but really, the information doesn’t reveal barely anything about you personally (and you’re really not that interesting). It helps me to help you. If I see 871 people visited my site on an 800 x 600 resolution device, and my website does not scale that low, I need to fix the problem for them. That information helped me do that. I do not have any “supercookies”, I cannot see your income, track you forever, what you wear to bed, any of that, just the information that is required to pass between a browser and server in order for internet browsing to take place.
Also, if you take a website like Amazon, and expect them to manually check every single page on their entire website, the hundreds of thousands of pages…that’s silly. They would never do that, especially when a simple tracker will immediately tell a web manager “1056 people returned an error on this page” and then that manager can go out and get it fixed.
Especially as those errors may not manifest in every case, or for every browser, or may only occur when a specific sequence or combination of actions is performed. It’s completely reasonable and sensible to track behaviours and log errors.
None of which explains tracking cookies, especially those that don’t expire for 30 years or more, supercookies, such as Flash’s, and web bugs, especially those planted in emails.
At any rate, the OP asked whether blocking ads hurts a website. I block them, for the reasons above and because ads have proven to be exceptional malware delivery systems.
My reasons for blocking them trumps a site’s decision to run them, and my conscience is clear.
Advertisements are literally psychological warfare. Stop treating me and my family as the enemy and I’ll stop blocking your manipulation and lies.
To be clear, informing the public that your business exists, what goods and services it offers, and where to find you is an honest and legit way to solicit customers. Bandwagon appeals, superlatives, and straight up lies (such as ever mentioning the words “free” or “savings”) is psychological manipulation and should be shunned by everyone.
A good way to tell the difference is to compare the advertisements on commercial radio stations to the underwriting on non-profit stations. “Brought to you by the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation” is great. “Buy this NOW!!! and you will become more sexually attractive! Don’t and your wife will divorce you! Save 1000% if you refer your entire social network in the next 5 minutes!” is evil, shameful and should bring such social disapproval that the business fails immediately and the owners become destitute.
I don’t care if my user agent tells you what browser I’m using or what OS I run or what link I clicked to find your site. But propaganda and psyops aimed at separating me and mine from our hard earned money will earn you a spot on my enemies list. Not to mention the malware that tends to accompany it. Anything I do to protect myself at that point is fair game. Stop doing it.
I’m curious about this. Are you consistent in this approach? Do you watch all the commercials in every TV show, or listen to all the commercials on the radio? Or do you mute, fast forward, change the channel, get up and go to the kitchen, any of those other avoidance behaviors?
Or, God forbid, maybe you’re one of the youngsters who doesn’t experience any of that because all their media consumption is streamed, downloaded, or web-based, so you’re also pre-indoctrinated to consume advertising, rather than exercising your fundamental human right to ignore, avoid, or disable it like the elder generations did.
I guess I’ll give you the time of day? I don’t see why this is so unthinkable…
So, my stance is: Ads are a necessary part of “free” service. Money must come from somewhere as nothing in life is really free. If there are no donors then advertisement is an option. Following that:
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Radio. I’ve paid to go ad-free on an otherwise free internet radio station I listen to because their ads were not varied enough and I heard the same one quite often. I do not listen to the radio in the car as I can’t stand ads then. However, when working in the kitchen I will turn the radio on and leave it alone until I’m done and turn it off.
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TV. I do not have cable television. I do not watch broadcast television. I pay for Netflix. I do watch streaming television sometimes. If an ad catches my eye I will finish it, however, streaming television often gives the option to skip an ad after several seconds. I usually take this option; they would not give this option to me if it kept them from earning enough money to continue the service and so I see no problem in taking it.
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Internet. I block ads after they are a problem. If they are very poor quality, that is, are scammy, I will block them (“This miracle cure has the doctors baffled!”, “10 crazy tips to lose weight fast!”). If a malicious set of ads get through, I block that site forever even if I think they could use the revenue. If I think a site is fishy before I go there I will block ahead of time, but I don’t go into sketchy pages often, and I usually never go back either. A tiny black mark.
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Phone games. I tend to buy ad-free versions of games if offered and I play more than two hours and plan to play more. Otherwise, there’s ads and I leave them be. Without the ads I wouldn’t have a game.
I mean, this shit isn’t free. It isn’t free. If you’re not paying with your actual dollars you have to pay some other way, and advertisement is usually it. Very few people donate enough to keep these services afloat. Either way I exercise my right to avoid within reason, by either taking the out they offer or by paying cash up front.
“God forbid” I understand how the world works.
Magazines, cable, the internet. I pay for all of these and they’re full of ads. You’re telling me ads are necessary to pay for things that I already pay for? No, ads are parasites that infect every form of broadcast messaging. It has nothing to do with free services, it has everything to do with psychological warfare on the part of sellers against consumers. You have money, I want it, here’s some propaganda and lies to smooth over the process of taking your money and giving it to me.
Webmasters, networks and publishers try and take morality out of it by saying “it’s how I make money” but that’s no excuse. Find another way to make money. Here, I’ll help you by opting out of the ads you serve me. Once a critical mass does the same, we’ll force your hand. Or you can do the right thing and stop before it gets to that point.
Yes, because otherwise that $5 magazine would be going for much more. That $5 doesn’t cover all 100% of the costs going into the magazine or they wouldn’t need the ads. A business needs to make at least a little money to keep operating.
You pay for access to the internet which covers the lines, service, and hardware owned by the ISP; you are not paying for each individual’s server or each domain name you visit, the bandwidth costs or any of that. Television is the same way. You’re paying for the service and the methods by which that service gets to you, you are not paying the costs to studios to hire actors, for the film cameras, for studio sets. Advertising covers all those costs. (It’s more complicated than that, naturally, but you should get the idea. Your service fee doesn’t cover everything.)