Mozilla Is Going To Track Facebook Tracking You (gizmodo.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Researchers at Mozilla announced this week the launch of its "Facebook Pixel Hunt" study, which seeks to track the company's immense web-wide tracking network and investigate the intel it's collecting on users. As the name suggests, this study is focused on a piece of tracking tech known as the "Facebook pixel." Chances are, you've visited a site that uses it; these tiny pieces of tech are buried in literally millions of sites across the web, from online stores to news outlets to... well, you name it. In exchange for onboarding a free pixel on their site, these sites can then track their own visitors and microtarget ads with the same sort of precision you'd expect from a data-hungry company like Facebook.
In exchange for giving these sites the power to track every pageview, purchase, search query, and much, much more, Facebook (naturally) requires that this data be shared with it, too. In cases where the website visitor has an account on some Facebook platform, this offsite data just gets glombed onto whatever Facebook already knows about that person. If they don't have a Facebook account, then the company collects that data anyway, and uses it to create a "shadow profile" of that particular person. These are the sorts of shadowy practices that Mozilla's team wants to research with this study -- and you can help them do it if you're a Firefox user. Mozilla teamed up with reporters from the Markup to gather details about Facebook tracking using a free-to-download browser extension, Mozilla Rally, that will hoover up data sent out by Facebook's pixels as you browse across the web. Aside from that data, the extension also keeps track of the time spent on different web pages, the URLs that the browser visits, and more. Mozilla was quick to note in its announcement that the only data being exported from the extension will be de-identified, and not shared with any third parties besides the Markup's reporters.
In exchange for giving these sites the power to track every pageview, purchase, search query, and much, much more, Facebook (naturally) requires that this data be shared with it, too. In cases where the website visitor has an account on some Facebook platform, this offsite data just gets glombed onto whatever Facebook already knows about that person. If they don't have a Facebook account, then the company collects that data anyway, and uses it to create a "shadow profile" of that particular person. These are the sorts of shadowy practices that Mozilla's team wants to research with this study -- and you can help them do it if you're a Firefox user. Mozilla teamed up with reporters from the Markup to gather details about Facebook tracking using a free-to-download browser extension, Mozilla Rally, that will hoover up data sent out by Facebook's pixels as you browse across the web. Aside from that data, the extension also keeps track of the time spent on different web pages, the URLs that the browser visits, and more. Mozilla was quick to note in its announcement that the only data being exported from the extension will be de-identified, and not shared with any third parties besides the Markup's reporters.
How meta. (Score:2)
Beware of recursion!
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Especially since if you are to participate in this tracking of tracking-pixels you need to register and therefore you'll be handing over your data to another entity and therefore be tracked by that to some extent.
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So who's going to track Mozilla tracking Facebook tracking you?
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So who's going to track Mozilla tracking Facebook tracking you?
Google.
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So who's going to track Google tracking Mozilla tracking Facebook tracking you?
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Don't do this. It's not going to end well.
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Beware of recursion!
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So who's going to track Google tracking Mozilla tracking Facebook tracking you?
Lets put it on the blockchain! Then everyone can track everything!!
Blockchain solves everything!111!
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Facebook, it's obvious dear Watson.
"Meta" stands for... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Metastasize"
The more things change ... (Score:3)
onboarding a free pixel on their site, these sites can then track their own visitors and microtarget ads with the same sort of precision you'd expect from a data-hungry company like Facebook.
Sooo. Google Analytics? I remember using that more than a decade ago. What is so astoundingly new about this?
Re: The more things change ... (Score:2)
Nothing. I added a content policy header behind my simple wordpress installation and it seems my theme also has that 1 pixel image bring loaded as data: blob.
Turns out Mozilla is funded by Google.
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Google Analytics isn't a devious underhanded pixel tracking tool. It's a bog standard piece of executed javascript which is trivially blocked. It also provides a benefit to the website owner, unlike say Facebook's tracking.
They are not the same.
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Google Analytics isn't a devious underhanded pixel tracking tool.
It's a bog standard piece of executed javascript which is trivially blocked.
This is a distinction without a difference. People are being tracked enmasse with both options.
It also provides a benefit to the website owner, unlike say Facebook's tracking.
Obviously pixel trackers benefit site owners or they wouldn't be installing them.
https://learndigitaladvertisin... [learndigit...tising.com]
https://www.facebook.com/busin... [facebook.com]
https://www.insil.com.au/post/... [insil.com.au]
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/fa... [oberlo.com]
The problem is the same in both instances whether it is a website owner too lazy to use a stat package or installing third party tracking bugs to gain some kind of benefit. The site owner is simply indi
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This is a distinction without a difference. People are being tracked enmasse with both options.
So is me flicking your nose and shooting you in the face also a distinction without a difference? I mean I'm hurting your face with both options right?
Please put a bit more thought into your posts.
Obviously pixel trackers benefit site owners or they wouldn't be installing them.
Sorry but you've clearly not used tracking services before. The Facebook pixel gives you a pathetically tiny amount of information compared to Google Analytics. The benefits you get are nothing more than a bare minimum marketing effort from Facebook to get people to install it.
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What is so astoundingly new about this?
It's almost as if you didn't even bother to read the headline or summary before posting.
What's "new" is that Mozilla is going to track the trackers.
(and probably block them)
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In before anyone else says it.
Those responsible for tracking the people who have just been tracked have been tracked. A Mozilla once bit my sister.
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What's "new" is that Mozilla is going to track the trackers.
(and probably block them)
The tracking-the-tracker bit is nice, provided the user gets to see the data. Blocking it would also be nice, if they have the fortitude to peeve Faceplant and won't be bought off.
Now if they could solve the problem of shit jumping around just while I'm about to click on it so I end up hitting an ad instead, and maybe support video codecs people actually use...
So What's the Best Analogy? (Score:1)
a) indulgences, or
b) carbon credits?
Why else do this with only Facebook's tracking and not Google's?
Or was it simply Google's aim to fortify elections and "prevent the next Trump situation"?
Re:So What's the Best Analogy? (Score:4, Informative)
Researchers at Mozilla announced this week the launch of its "Facebook Pixel Hunt" study, which seeks to track the company's immense web-wide tracking network and investigate the intel it's collecting on users.
Mozilla introduced Collusion in 2011, later rebranding it as Lightbeam, to study third-party cookie tracking across all platforms, not just Facebook. It was eventually retired in favor of Firefox's built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection [mozilla.org], which also works against Google's tracking.
Welp (Score:2)
Time to facebook to create a script that tracks Mozilla Rally and collect the data about it
What the heck is going on (Score:2)
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at Mozilla? So they think, tracking the tracking is important to protect from the tracking but only when it is certain entities that are tracking.
You can solve world hunger or you can analyse the food production and logistics issues in one of the worst impacted countries to attempt to make a plan to resolve it.
Wait, that wasn't an "or". You can't solve world hunger, and analysing the global tracking network of every entity will just produce a massive database full of noise and garbage. I hope in your professional life you realise that problems need to be broken down into addressable analysable chunks...
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So they think, tracking the tracking is important to protect from the tracking but only when it is certain entities that are tracking.
Meanwhile they are tracking you when you save a web page as displayed (with Pocket, since they changed the extensions model and broke Scrapbook+) or when your browser is updated (since it will open a page on their site when you do, even reverting the setting which prevents it if you have set it in about:config).
The Mozilla foundation is hypocritical and they are doing their best to ruin everything good about Firefox.
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They are positioning themselves to be the privacy focused browser, a bit like Apple and DuckDuckGo do.
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What other option is there?
ad.doubleclick.net up to their old tricks? (Score:2)
The transparent individual pixel images are an old trick. They're part of the "third party" information sharing part of many commercial sites, and part of the concern when bulky companies share client information among all their international branches, where privacy laws may not be as strict as they are in the EU or the courts as easy to file suit in as the USA.
Ahem (Score:2)
The extension is US only (Score:5, Informative)
I installed the extension, living in Europe, and was redirected to a page saying: "At this time, Mozilla Rally is only available to participants based in the U.S., but we're hoping to provide access to other countries as soon as we can."
Great idea! Do it to Google too! (Score:3)
Oh wait... Don't bite the hand that feeds you, right?
Facebook Container (Score:2)
is enough I presume?
So.. they will be meta tracking Meta. (Score:2)
and the snake eats its tail.
Single shared identity (Score:2)
Good luck (Score:2)
I clear everything every day, or when I close Firefox. Any trackers are gone so good luck following me across the web. Unless they think I'm someone new every time in which case it's bad data.