And people scoff when I call them Socialist Networking sites.
It's quite clear that FR is NOT that same sort of site.
It isn’t a good idea to surf the web with facebook, gmail (google+), ebay or a lot of other sites “logged in”.
Your “facebook” profile is linked to articles of you like or comment on a news item, ebay ads on other sites are now displaying specific items that you once looked at on ebay’s site saying “there’s still time for you to buy this!” (paraphrased), etc.
You are being tracked and your interests logged. You are being market profiled. And as they say, it’s being done (in part) to focus their sales pitch on YOU as a consumer (imagine a political ad that sells a candidate’s positions one way for some users and differently for another user).
Privacy went out the window in the 1980s when telemarketers and junkmailers got Congress to permit the sale of your private information. That file on you keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Makes asking for your “mother’s maiden name” on financial transactions a bit worthless seeing as how everyone has that in your file as well.
Well, there is a clear way to block it... If your browser continuously visited tens of thousands of random websites, all of the real stuff would be in the grass...
“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.””
Well, wasn’t that nice of them to decide that tracking virtually every site a person visits wasn’t a violation of a person’s privacy.
“websites like whitehouse.gov and YouPorn.com”
?
gee, aren’t those pretty much the same website nowadays?
Humor aside, I note that "blaze.com" is on that list as well, which is no real surprise given that the site has every other manner of annoying pop-ups, mouse-overs, and other adware installed. But "biblegateway.com"? What were they thinking?
EFF Says Its Anti-Tracking Tool Blocks New Form Of Digital Fingerprinting. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/230430/eff-says-its-anti-tracking-tool-blocks-new-form-of.html
It’s only a matter of time till somebody comes up with a browser add on to block this.
I have found AddBlockPlus and Ghostery do a fantastic job of blocking and disrupting tracking sites. Ghostery reports the number of trackers a site is using. I’ve been amazed at the number of sites that use 30+ trackers.
FWIW, FR has just one tracker that I know of, Google Analytics, which is harmless.
Nothing new. Been around 20+ years.
I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg is all over it.
This is the creepiest tracking software to invade your privacy that I’ve heard about so far.
Read the article and there is a link to an opt out feature.
It is not impossible to defend yourself from this boo chit.
When LSO’s first came on the scene the work arounds weren’t, at first, easy to dispense with.
These days you can block them at will.
You can also end the spying on you and surveillance by marketing thieves with fingerprinting.
Here is an excellent thread discussing the subject.
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/23053/how-to-fight-browser-fingerprinting
It would be EXTREMELY helpful if someone were to publish the domains or links to pages that have this code. By looking at some known examples, other domains or web pages with it could be identified.
There are a great many people who simply cannot ENDURE to mind their own business.
Check out Panopticlick. What for, cookies‽