Just some stuff about me.
This video demonstrates how, by simply visiting one website, you can leak your data to many ad networks and analytic companies.
During the comparison, I used web browsers as intended by their developers, Firefox + uBlock Origin and Google Chrome.
Google Chrome allowed visited website to share data with the following companies (and websites/domains owned by them):
Google (doubleclick.com, google-analytics.com, googletagservices.com, adservice.google.com, googlesyndication.com, gstatic.com)
Amazon (amazon-adsystem.com)
Twitter (ads-twitter.com, analytics.twitter.com, t.co)
Prebid (the-ozone-project.com), Improve Digital, Azerion (360yield.com, possibly adnxs.com), Equativ (smartadserver.com), Index Exchange (casalemedia.com), Amobee (ad.turn.com), VDX.tv (tribalfusion.com)
Beeswax (match.prod.bidr.io)
Domain name matches company name (scorecardresearch.com, permutive.com, hbopenbid.pubmatic.com, brandmetrics.com, bidder.criteo.com, simpli.fi, eyeota.net)
Domains with hidden owners (x.bidswitch.net)
And something around 100 domains that I was too lazy to list.
Firefox disallowed not only connections to analytic companies, but also repetitive connections to ophan.theguardian.com which were trying to send attentionMs= to the website tested.
You may have noticed that some domain names contain words like “bid”, “bidder” or “bidr”. This is because you are the product, and your impression was put on an auction.
With real-time bidding, advertising buyers bid on an impression [when user sees/is about to see an ad] and, if the bid is won, the buyer’s ad is instantly displayed on the publisher’s site.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_bidding
Q: Why have you accepted cookies?
A: Because the average PC user would do this. Firefox hasn’t even asked me to accept them; the popup was hidden automatically, so I wasn’t able to accept them.
Q: uBlock Origin can be installed on Google Chrome too.
A: Never heard of Manifest V3? Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently.
Q: “June 2023, the Chrome Web Store will no longer allow Manifest V2”
A: I don’t care whether it is enforced or not. Google wants to do this, sacrificing users’ security (not even talking about privacy) in exchange for money (it’s not like they haven’t done this before, but anyway), this is what matters for me.