Does any of you know firsthand how the ad industry works? I hate them with all my heart and I already go out of my way to block them but maybe you have been on the other side of the fence and can share some internal insight on what to focus on to really distrust the data collection. I.e. even if I use unlock can the ad network still build a profile? Is the benefit only cosmetic on my end? I also run a local AdGuard instance on my network
The benefit is generally only cosmetic at your end.
As backwards as it sounds, the more you do to try to “anonymize” yourself on the internet, the more you actually stand out… because so few people go out of their way to use anonymization tools, which are easily spotted.
So what happens is your profile goes into the “People Who Like Privacy” bucket, and you get ads related to the fact that you want privacy.
They may not be able to create a profile on “you” speficially with your name, address, email, et cetera, but they will be able to create a general profile for “you” about your preferences, web browser, screen size, geolocation, et cetera.
In other words it would be better to not block them and try to blend in? Does this count for DNS level blocks? In theory the ad networks will not see me connecting to them
Some people seem to think that blending in is the best/only strategy to avoid being tracked and profiled. The developer of GrapheneOS advocates for this in no uncertain terms, encouraging users of his Vanadium web browser not to use uBlock or NoScript, yet also claims that DNS-level blocking is the only way to block content without sticking out like a sore thumb. I personally question his assumptions regarding this. All it would take for a big ad broker like Google, Amazon, Baidu to detect this would be for them to analyze their web server logfiles to spot which distinct clients (IP addr. x date x time x User-Agent string x other fingerprints) connect to their front-ends but don’t connect to the analytics or ad-network servers during the same page-loading time frame.
One might also wonder whether ad brokers put deals in place with their customers to get read access to these customer’s web server logfiles to do the same kind of analysis in exchange for cheaper rates. Or perhaps under the guise of “let us offload you of these complicated analytics tasks, just show us your logfiles and we’ll take it from there.”
I think there are levels to it. Adblockers, while still not being used by the majority of people, has a pretty significant chunk of users and is becoming more common to regular people, not just privacy-concerned users. So I think DNS level blocking is fine. You start to stand out when you add more privacy and anonymity tools on top of it, like Decentralyes, for example.
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