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

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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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:52AM (5 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:52AM (#843280)

    as with many others, is that no users ever asked for it. It's just sneakily imposed on them without their consent.

    Welcome to the marvelous world of Big Data...

    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
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    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:19AM (#843282)

    Nah, it's the marvellous world of people who want others to write them free web browsers, while not lifting a finger to assert any control.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:30AM (1 child)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:30AM (#843284) Journal

    You'll also note that M$ has had quite a few of their people on the HTML5 committee [w3.org], with more at lower levels, screwing things up. That fact and the standard subsequently getting fscked up are no coincidence. The W3C has been out of the hands of developers and academics for years now. Those that run it now have no qualms about killing off the web [defectivebydesign.org] and, indeed, are moving that direction. pings in anchor elements are just extra nails in the coffin.

    --
    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:36AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:36AM (#843325)

      The W3C has been out of the hands of developers and academics for years now

      And Tim Berners-Lee works for Microsoft to screw stuff up? The last I checked he was allegedly the inventor of the World Wide Web.

      See also: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Jan/0040.html [w3.org]
      He also seems kinda dumb to suggest UDP. It should be obvious that if the browser is going to do a ping it should use whatever protocol is specified in the URL if the browser supports it.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday May 14 2019, @12:20PM (1 child)

    by digitalaudiorock (688) on Tuesday May 14 2019, @12:20PM (#843374) Journal

    Exactly. It's bad enough they jam "tracking without javaScript" into the standard. But if browsers like Firefox implement this as anything other than an opt-in feature, that tells you just how far down at the bottom the end user falls in this picture. Disgusting frankly. I wonder how/if Palemoon will deal with this one.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @12:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @12:41PM (#843801)

      Opt-in so so last century. Now you are expected to say “no, I don't want to be dataraped” every fews days and sometimes in different places, sometimes hidden away where the sun doesn't shine.