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Blocking Hyperlink Auditing Tracking Pings With Extensions

posted by chromas on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:57AM   
from the Give-me-one-ping.-One-ping-only. dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser

Blocking Hyperlink Auditing Tracking Pings with Extensions

For those who are not familiar with hyperlink auditing, or Pings, it is an HTML feature that allows sites to track when a link is clicked. Creating hyperlink auditing URLs is very easy, as you can simply create a normal hyperlink HTML tag, but also include a ping="[url]" variable as shown below.

<a href="https://www.google.com/" ping="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/pong.php">Ping Me</a>

[...] With most popular browsers now enabling this feature by default, with Firefox doing so in the future, the only way to disable hyperlink auditing is through the use of browser addons and extension. For those who want to retain control over whether this feature can be used, below are three extensions that allow you to disable hyperlink auditing pings in Chrome and Firefox.

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Original Submission

• user.js settings user.js settings (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:27AM (4 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:27AM (#843274)

  Assuming firefox doesn't remove the about:config option, but just changes the defaults, add to your user.js (so firefox new default is overruled):

  user_pref("browser.send_pings", false);

  No extension needed.

  Starting Score:	0		points
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  Informative=2, Disagree=1, Total=3
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• Re:user.js settings (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:42AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:42AM (#843277)

  Cool, thanks for the suggestion. Just looked at my FF 60.6.1esr and it is already set:
        browser.send_pings;false

  On the other hand, these look related--maybe they need to be changed to make sure?
        browser.send_pings.max_per_link;1
        browser.send_pings.require_same_host;false

  And several others that include that ominous word, "telemetry"...

  Since EFF Privacy Badger attempts to stop tracking, I wonder if they will add this to a future version of their extension?

  Parent

• They promised to REMOVE the setting. In writing. They promised to REMOVE the setting. In writing. (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:48AM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:48AM (#843361)

  https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-firefox-to-enable-hyperlink-ping-tracking-by-default/ [bleepingcomputer.com]

  "We don’t believe that offering an option to disable this feature alone will have any meaningful improvement in the user privacy, since website can (and often already do) detect the various supported mechanisms for hyperlink auditing in each browser and disabling the more user friendly mechanisms will cause them to fall back to the less user friendly ones, without actually disabling the hyperlink auditing functionality itself."

  Isn't it nice to see the weaselspeak? It's for your own good, else they'll do it without the lube the next time.

  This is what happens when politickers masquerading as programmers take over a FOSS project. Not just the other devs get screwed; users too.

  Parent

  • Re:They promised to REMOVE the setting. In writing (Score: 3, Informative) by The Shire on Tuesday May 14 2019, @02:20PM

    by The Shire (5824) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @02:20PM (#843416)

    They said the only reason it hasn't been enabled is because they haven't finished the implementation. I have to wonder if they're working out ways to prevent extensions from blocking the functionality.

    Some browsers that do support extensions prevent the extensions from "tampering" with "whitelisted" URLs/hosts/traffic, so there *might* be some cases where pings can bypass extensions that are trying to block them.

    That would piss me off something fierce.

    Parent

  • Re:They promised to REMOVE the setting. In writing (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @06:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @06:28PM (#843523)

    Beside, even if it is enabled, there isn't anything stopping them from using hyperlink auditing and the other mechanisms they were already using.

    Parent