DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused tech company, today launched something called Tracker Radar—an open-source, automatically generated and continually updated list that currently contains more than 5,000 domains that more than 1,700 companies use to track people online.
The idea behind Tracker Radar, first reported by CNET, is to share the data DuckDuckGo has collected to create a better set of tracker blockers. DuckDuckGo says that the majority of existing tracker data falls into two types: block lists and in-browser tracker identification. The issue is the former relies on crowd-sourcing and manual maintenance. The latter is difficult to scale and also can be potentially abused due to the fact it's generating a list based on your actual browsing habits. Tracker Radar supposedly gets around some of these issues by looking at the most common cross-site trackers and including a host of information about their behavior, things like prevalence, fingerprinting, cookies, and privacy policies, among other considerations.
See DuckDuckGo's Tracker Radar GitHub page for the list and other tools.
Obligatory alt-aristarchus comment: If it walks like a duckduckgo, and it quacks like a duckduckgo, it's got privacy like a duckduckgo! Thanks, Google!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:04AM (8 children)
Love grilled duck - it's like grilled chicken with bacon on top.
I hear Peking Duck is pretty good, too, though seems extravant waste just to eat the skin, but whatever.
(Score: 2, Funny) by BsAtHome on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:24AM
Well, when it has been grilled, parted and eaten, then it cannot track you anymore. It will simply be digested and shit will exit in due time. What is not to like about that?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:26AM (5 children)
I give you very best duck [youtube.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:15AM (2 children)
Okay, you clickbaited me, but the last second made it worth it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 07 2020, @02:43AM
Yeah, sorry 'bout that.
I forgot to queue it up properly [youtu.be]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @05:40PM
Offtopic
Democrats are stalking. No sense of humor. They are still so bitter
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:18PM (1 child)
The second best thing in the universe:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kHRzuXkVIJE [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @05:44PM
Well, I'm glad some people can have a bit of fun with the topic without getting slammed for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @03:15PM
Only Communists would help people protect their privacy!
It started back with that game in the 80's. Ever since then the Duck has become a national symbol of the bulshivics. We cannot let the Ducks create a mineshaft gap!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @12:34AM (4 children)
On the github page:
"Sorry, we had to truncate this directory to 1,000 files. 4,326 entries were omitted from the list."
Putting a tracking block list on a service controlled by Redmond is probably not a reliable place to host it. Perhaps it should be mirrored in a few dozen places, with validation hashes to it can be checked across multiple sites for continuity. Not complaining, but this is the sort of thing that attracts vendor abuse.
Thanks!
(Score: 5, Informative) by progo on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:34AM (1 child)
This is not a problem or anything malicious. The web front-end for a source code repository in GitHub is meant for casual inspection. If you are going to use the data, it's assume you will download a clone of the whole repository via Git protocol, with all of its history and metadata. Then you can read what you want locally.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:56PM
Ah, so the project is only for people who already use github and know the knucklehead stuff. /sarc
It still doesn't solve the fact that the image can be vectored differently to different users from the server side. Which is why it needs to be mirrored. Or are you saying that you trust github?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @07:41PM (1 child)
what kind of homo modded this "troll"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @03:08PM
Dunno, but I'm pretty sure he came from Redmond.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:46AM
They even make it easy to root out Government corruption!
https://www.salon.com/2020/03/06/trump-org-charged-taxpayers-eight-times-more-for-secret-service-stays-than-it-claimed-documents/ [salon.com]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 07 2020, @02:26AM (4 children)
Thank you DDG.
And thank you SN, the article links to a firefox extension that installs DDG Privacy Essentials.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday March 07 2020, @06:57AM
Hemo always brings us the best stuff!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:25PM (2 children)
won't most this data get incorporated into extensions like ublock origin?
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:23AM (1 child)
I fail to see a problem with that. It seems to me that making it even easier for users to block those domains is a *good* thing to do!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday March 30 2020, @06:48PM
deleted textWit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:07PM
between two ducks. Ended in full board seki.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @10:58PM
https://m.soundcloud.com/wtfbrahh/francis-hates-google-remix [soundcloud.com]