Jan Wildeboer 😷Apr 23, 2024
What happens when every time your browser sends data to a tracker it makes a beep sound? Well, @bert_hubert did just that. And it sounds like you are listening to an old school modem. Creepy stuff! https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/tracker-beeper/
Tracker Beeper - Bert Hubert's writings

A week ago, I finally got round to implementing an idea I’d been toying with for years: what if your computer made a little bit of noise every time it sent data to Google? From studying logs, I’d long known just how many sites send all your visits and clicks to (at least) Google, but a log that you have to manually create first and then analyze is not very dramatic.

Bert Hubert's writings
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷
To all the commenters explaining how to make this go away: That's not the point. At all. The majority out there has to deal with this stuff and they don't even know. That's what this experiment is about.
Apr 23, 2024 at 6:07pmWeb
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Apr 23, 2024
IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) the real question is: Why do browsers share all of this? (And it's not just Chrome. These are Web Standards, so all browsers share this) Why isn't there a simple option to say "Read-Only, send no data back except for which page I want to see"? The web is not we want it to be, IMHO.
Show threadJulius Schwartzenberg - ЮліусApr 23, 2024

@jwildeboer in a way it relates to why do popular browsers do this and why are these browsers popular. I would say it relates to what ships with popular operating systems. (In my world the popular operating systems are Ubuntu, RHEL etc. ;) and they ship Firefox by default.)

Maybe it would interesting from a RedHat perspective to look with the Fedora project what a default browser should be doing.

Show threaddexternemrodApr 23, 2024
@jwildeboer
I like that idea.
But from my understanding the browser cannot know if the content a page delivers is necessary content or trackers. So without having a database of trackers to blog or some heuristics this seems not possible.
Show threadLautreGApr 24, 2024

@jwildeboer @Gon0s
That is why you need use Ublock Origin, and don't allow JavaScript.

Many good websites works fine without JavaScript.
Many spy websites need JavaScript.

With Ublock Origin you can mitigate some part if JavaScript is still needed.

It's also safer to surf on Internet without advertising or trackers. Virus can be propagate by them, or promoted by them.

#UblockOrigin

Show threadGenders: ♾️, 🟪⬛🟩; Soni L.Apr 24, 2024

@jwildeboer we could redesign the URI.

does it need to be universal?

Show threadNina "Erina" Satragno 💫Apr 24, 2024

@jwildeboer

Ignoring the technical (how would it be implemented?) and ecosystem (breaking the existing web) challenges, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to identify yourself to a website, mostly around accessing data that belongs to you.

You can get close to what you want by disabling all cookies, and only visiting low enough entropy URLs. Most of the web will stop working though.

Private browsing modes are a compromise where site data is sent only if it was generated during the session

Show threadNina "Erina" Satragno 💫Apr 24, 2024

@jwildeboer of course, avoiding cookies and identifying URLs only gets you so far since those two we can detect and decide what to do about. The really evil tracking is fingerprinting which the industry doesn't have a good response for.

If you haven't heard about it, there's a wired article here https://www.wired.com/story/browser-fingerprinting-tracking-explained/

What Is Browser Fingerprinting and How Does It Track You?

Cookies are on the way out—but not enough is being done about browser fingerprinting. So what is it?

WIRED
Show threadIrveApr 24, 2024
@jwildeboer to me the most woke one is the internal ip address that's given out. That's just poor sabotage, Firefox
Show threadHaelwenn /элвэн/ Apr 24, 2024
@jwildeboer You could try to address this on the software side but trying to fix social problems with technical solutions is a red herring.
For example you'd just get even more first-party trackers instead, or everything being done behind the user's back. What this shows is an easily visible part of the iceberg.