Ask HN: How prevalent is non-cookie-based web tracking today?

This happens in some other European countries, too, like Italy.

I'm not sure but I think I remember reading this. And it would mean that hotspot tracking (the most prevalent form as far as I've noticed) still works.

These guys will tell you how unique is your browser fingerprint

https://amiunique.org/fp

It does limit you somewhat, but a large part of the web, in HN, slashdot, bbc, most news sites, TheRegister, wikipedia, most of stackexchange, and a shedload more all work fine.

Fat sites do break though, and I don't think there's really any way around that other than temporary whitelisting.

The Web is a lot faster for me now, though.

You can check your BlueKai profile here https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/

Many large, higher quality ad buyers (agencies and direct sold) can get enough return from non-greyarea inventory like this. There's no point in them taking (even a small) perceived risk of buying this grey market inventory.

However, they likely do use this tracking data second or third hand via their third party data providers brokering and including it in larger data sets they use for cross site targeting via DMPs.

Finally, there's simple economics: people who go through enough effort to block trackers and other things are (perceived) to be less likely to engage with ads (e.g. they see it as you do, when one 'slips through'). So there's no point in paying $$$ for those eyeballs.

All of this in combination means you get low quality, barrel bottoms ads.

I don't feel like I am unusual in any way, as in I can't see how I have any natural, dumb-luck defense against any of this tracking. If companies like Google, Amazon, FB, etc, are in any way really trying to use what they think they know about me to get me to buy stuff or influence my thoughts or behaviour, then they seem to be doing a really, really bad job of it.

As far as privacy goes, my concern is far more focused on apps/programs stealing my photos of my kids, or tracking me around town, or knowing who I meet and talk to.

As far as predicting my future behaviour, I have not been impressed so far.

the only time these are ever close is when they are based on users' previous search terms

There's human effort involved in planning a micro targeting campaign. Way easier (and short-term cheaper) to do some broad strokes ads with a couple ok-ish proxies for your target market than pay people that know what they're doing. So your conversion rates are garbage and CAC higher than it could be, but your spending is on the action instead of front-loaded on salaries/agency fees.

Browser fingerprinting is a single piece in creating an id graph. Fingerprinting would be 100% useless without a graph, unless you're doing it to individuals which would be NSA-level acting.

This questionable judgment on their part seriously puts their reputation at risk in my eyes.

A person not in IT is probably just fine if you install ublock Origin.

Or you would have to train your family to use different browsers for different things and you want to have at least one "vanilla" browser on your system. Just recently my US CC website stopped working with my browser. For such things you want to have one major browser without any plug ins.

e.g.

1. Google Chrome (Vanilla, no plug ins). Used when needed (recently to pay my CC). 2. Chromium: Facebook, Gmail 3. Firefox: buying tickets etc. 3. Vivali Browsing the internet

Again my setup does not work so well against fingerprinting. My plug-in combination is so unique that I can be tracked via my plug ins.

Sure. I wouldn't limit it to Tor, though. Because there are just too many CAPTCHAs. That's much less of an issue using VPNs.

Chaining VPNs is arguably overkill for avoiding fingerprinting. Still, trusting a single VPN service is risky. If they were complicit, you'd still be tracked. But if you at least chain two VPN services, there's less risk. Overall risk is more or less the product of all the individual risks, if they're independent.

Edit: If exploit resistance is less of an issue, it's easy to chain VPNs at the Linux OS level using ip route and iptables. Iptables rules drop everything on enp0s3 except traffic to the first VPN server, and drop everything on tun0 except traffic to the second VPN server.

You set enp0s3 as the route for the first VPN server. After connecting to it, you set tun0 as the route for the second VPN server. After connecting to it, you check for leaks using tcpdump.

If you define "normal people" to exclude those who take existential risks, then compartmentalization never really matters for them. But that's a sad way to live, in my opinion.

Compartmentalization would have mattered a lot for Chelsea Manning. Or, arguably, for Julian Assange. Or for various public figures whose careers have been destroyed after pwnage. Or for DPR.