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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

• M$ presence felt at the W3C M$ presence felt at the W3C (Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:30AM (1 child)

  by canopic jug (3949) 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.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+3
  Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:M$ presence felt at the W3C (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.

  Parent