Hacker News Reader

Comment by herf | Hacker News Reader

I have many ad servers blocked at DNS mostly because of cross-domain tracking. Browsers (by default) allow third-party cookies, and while I don't mind if a site runs ads, I do think cross-site tracking and profiling has to be more controllable by users.

The firefox extension "requestpolicy" http://www.requestpolicy.com/ is a fascinating view of the web. It's too strict to use every day, but is much more an "opt-in" view that everyone should try for a day.

View on HN

I use RequestPolicy every day. I'm amazed that no browser provides this functionality built-in. Blocking all third party resources by default offers some strong protection against XSS and tracking sites. That it blocks ads and causes pages to render more spartanly is merely a bonus and exposes poor designs. Since everything that's blocked is accessible with the click of a button, I don't find it that inconvenient. I just wish more sites would serve all of their content from within their domain (including ads).

I love requestpolicy, because it DOES let you say "ad company X's ads only display if they're being shown on Y.com"

> Browsers (by default) allow third-party cookies

Internet Explorer and Safari do not. If you have Flash installed, supercookies can still be used anyways.

Using a Flash Blocker and resetting the cookie values inside of Flash alter that behavior.

  rm -rf ~/.flash
  mkdir ~/.flash
  chmod -rwx ~/.flash

Reply on news.ycombinator.com