Both Site A and Site B (and C, D, E, F, G, H, I…) have an embedded/linked script, or an Ad, or an invisible 1x1 .gif served from Site Z. The cookie’s source is that of Site Z, not Site A or Site B. Site Z then shares the data with advertisers, hosts and everyone else that’s willing to pay.
From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Wallace Turner Sent: Wednesday, 5 October 2016 11:38 AM To: ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> Subject: Re: [OT] Ad tracking and security I had a quick look into this because straight away i thought the scenario Greg described wouldnt be possible just with cookies - that is if you go to site-A and it creates a cookie how would this cookie then be sent to site-B to determine its the same person? As Ken says It appears that they are able to generate a unique fingerprint: >>We look for browser type, screen size, active plugin data, active installed >>software, font usage, font size, time zones, IP, and countless other unique >>ways to correlate machines into unique ID’s [1] This same fingerprint is generated on site-A and site-B and they then serve ads - you can of course boycott the sites that participate in this ad network (I would like to know the scope of the various networks) I would assume (hope) that adblock or similar prevents the javascript calls to the ad networks... [1]: https://meteora.co/user-tracking-without-cookies/ On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Ken Schaefer <k...@adopenstatic.com<mailto:k...@adopenstatic.com>> wrote: Lots of ways you can get tracked, from IP address to cookies, to running scripts in your browser to get a “fingerprint” Lots of ways to try to limit this. Google “how advertisers track you” (or maybe using www.DuckDuckGo.com<http://www.DuckDuckGo.com> might be more apropos) From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com> [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com>] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Wednesday, 5 October 2016 10:40 AM To: ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Subject: [OT] Ad tracking and security Folks, this would normally be a Friday topic, but can someone explain how this is possible? ... Last week my wife purchased some clothes online from 'Tread Store'. This morning I was at her PC searching in IE for some technical answers and I followed a link to Experts Exchange. In the discussion there I see a large flashing banner ad for Tread Store. I deleted a handful of suspicious cookies, cleared the cache and went back to the page and the ads are still there. How the friggin' hell are they doing this? Is it simply by our IP address? If so, then there's not much I can do to stop this tracking without using a VPN or Tor browsing. This data collection creep is a serious worry. We order clothes, food, music, books and PC consumables online, so I presume it's all recorded. I also presume that as subscribers to The Age newspaper they are tracking every click we make. YouTube also records every video you watch. From this information you can produce a pretty good profile of someone you've never met. Some of us also voted online ... worried!? Greg K
