Tracking code that Meta and Russia-based Yandex embed into millions of websites is de-anonymizing visitors by abusing legitimate Internet protocols, causing Chrome and other browsers to surreptitiously send unique identifiers to native apps installed on a device, researchers have discovered. Google says it’s investigating the abuse, which allows Meta and Yandex to convert ephemeral web identifiers into persistent mobile app user identities.
The covert tracking—implemented in the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica trackers—allows Meta and Yandex to bypass core security and privacy protections provided by both the Android operating system and browsers that run on it. Android sandboxing, for instance, isolates processes to prevent them from interacting with the OS and any other app installed on the device, cutting off access to sensitive data or privileged system resources. Defenses such as state partitioning and storage partitioning, which are built into all major browsers, store site cookies and other data associated with a website in containers that are unique to every top-level website domain to ensure they’re off-limits for every other site.
Well, it’s always been a cat and mouse game.
Just earlier today, I got a pop-up on YouTube about how they would block me after 3 videos because I use an ad blocker. Jump to now and everything is fine again. Thank you, uBlock Origin!
I’ve been on Librewolf for a couple of years and yt is nagging me about ad blockers not being allowed, suddenly. Are they going to black screen me again?
they still try that?
i can’t remember the last time i have seen one of those warnings.
I’m guessing you use Firefox? It’s much better at evading that tracking.
Nah I saw it on FF as well. Forcing an update on the “Quick Fixes” blocklist on uBlock Origin got rid of it.
The business cycle dictates that companies try to re-implement bad ideas every six months to two years.
If the idea was good, they’d have implemented it and made their money. Only bad ideas are still ripe for exploitation and new economic growth, because you haven’t had someone as smart as me to make them work right.
Google doesn’t do global roll outs with their updates. The anti adblock stuff especially. They target only some % of randomly selected users to spread confusion online, and I would guess their hope is to frustrate people into disabling ad blockers on Youtube after reading a bunch of misinformation and placebo bad advice when looking for tech support.
Fair warning: Last week one of my accounts was seemingly shadowbanned, and now gets “This content isn’t available” on every video.
Logging out plays videos, making a new brand account worked, etc. and no notification from youtube.
You were shadowbanned for watching youtube in a web browser with adblock? Sounds excessive.
If you happen to use BlockTube, disable it. It’s currently triggering the adblock detection.