New Firefox Collusion... ATS and 3rd party Cookies

In an Ideal World we would be free to think, feel and believe as we wished. We would be free to express ourselves wherever to whoever whenever we wished. No-one would care at all, they'd be too busy expressing themselves themselves..

The main reason a site such as ATS exists, or needs to exist, is that this is very NOT an Ideal World. In THIS world, everything has a price. The price for being able to talk Conspiracies without folk thinking we're crazy is a few ads.. THEY can find out anything about anybody any time THEY want to. It's inevitable and there's nothing we can do, except, perhaps, discard all computers, mobile phones, identichips etc and VANISH!

Did you guys actually think this site was hidden or something? If the site comes up in google, anyone can find it. If you guys really want to go down the rabbit hole, research a bit about the dark net and .onion websites. Just be careful....

wait a moment OP, were you talking about the the links directly off the ATS web bubble, or were you looking at things on ATS and cliking links or images etc because i belive that counts as a track.

I only get one from ATS and thats their ad people one (which i dont mind because it pays for ats in some way)

Originally posted by Barbaricfellow
Not a single thing from this site sending data.
My configuration of addblock plus (with "antisocial"subscription) , no script and siteblock did a great job.
Great add on to test if anything slips trough though. THX for posting!

hey, take a look at page two. realize you just told everyone you use T&C breaking addons. facepalm.



lol

some people's kids.

reply to post by PrecogPsychicSensitive


awesome.

9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!
fly away, cookie, fly fly!

Originally posted by amethystmoon
Can someone tell me how ads and cookies are in the same boat. Blocking cookies doesn't get rid of the ads, that I have seen. I am sure ads have cookies too but one doesn't seem to affect the other. . Please correct me if I am wrong.

I'll try to explain it in short:

You visit AboveTopSecret, and an advert loads on the page.
When the advert loads it has a refferal header of the page that you loaded, so the advertising company knows what content you were reading or looking at.

You then visit another website which uses the same advertising company to display adverts, a refferal header of this page is also sent to the advert server, and they know which page you were looking at.

If you add cookies to be placed on the machine when a user views an advert, it's a unique id, and everytime you load an advert in your web browser from that same advertising company, they can log and keep track of every page you visit which happens to contain one of their adverts by looking at the refferal header alone.

Effectively the cookie is sent to their advert server each time an advert is loaded allowing them to generate a profile of websites that the user is interested in. So after a bit of browsing, say you went to an astronomy forum, and a telescope store which contained the same advertising companies adverts... they will start offering adverts related to telescopes and astronomy.

The same goes for if someone visit's several car manufacturers websites that happen to host adverts from the same advertising server, when you visit a site about gardening you will most probably receive adverts about cars.

It's a dirty tactic.

I have no problem with ATS finding reasonable ways to pay for itself. But I think they have gone beyond that into making profits a pretty central goal. Obviously I have no concrete evidence, but the censorship on this site has gone up noticibly in the one year as a contributing member. It is obvious that this website doesnt want us to talk about certain things (ie.drugs) not because it ruins the integrity of the site, rather it hurts profits. If we talk about drugs, it comes up in searches, it comes up in tags, it links to other pages, basically it hurts the chances of advertisers wanting to be associated with the site. Call me crazy but some of you know this to be true. If it was not the case, the complete banning of all talk, educational, conspiracy, medical, - non promoting sharing of knowlege would be allowed. Im tired of hearing the 'few bad apples we tried it' nonsense at least put us in the know.

Originally posted by el1jah
I have no problem with ATS finding reasonable ways to pay for itself. But I think they have gone beyond that into making profits a pretty central goal. Obviously I have no concrete evidence, but the censorship on this site has gone up noticibly in the one year as a contributing member. It is obvious that this website doesnt want us to talk about certain things (ie.drugs) not because it ruins the integrity of the site, rather it hurts profits. If we talk about drugs, it comes up in searches, it comes up in tags, it links to other pages, basically it hurts the chances of advertisers wanting to be associated with the site. Call me crazy but some of you know this to be true. If it was not the case, the complete banning of all talk, educational, conspiracy, medical, - non promoting sharing of knowlege would be allowed. Im tired of hearing the 'few bad apples we tried it' nonsense at least put us in the know.

All i have found from ATS so far is links to advert places, so not tracking if you love drugs (or anything you type or post or say or whatever) only tracking if you like ATS site and say t shirts google might put links to t shirts with ATF on rather than your ever word. Its not as bad as they for the most part. a HUGE amount of targetted advertising.

I could be mistaken but what this tool is detecting are scripts which are called from other domains.

Next to the obvious advertising scripts that profile your behaviour in order to serve you the "right" ad spam, the rest are there for the functioning of the site. Google analytics collects clicks and search terms people put into forms, others contain ajax / js frameworls for simple tasks such as menu animation or the real time topics etc, and thie mentioned chart site might create xml files that are used to display flash charts ( I use fusioncharts scripts for this purpose but I host them on my own server )

So far I didn't see anything ominous - except signs that this site is heavily commercialized and takes a lot of effort to profile its visitors - posted here. No sign of hackers or intelligence agencies at work here.

You don't think the NSA does need a funny script in order to tap into your puny little harddrives or internet connections through your ISP, hmm ? C'mon.

h3h3 - not one link

Protecting against tracking from third-party social media buttons & cookies

Mine's been running all day and it only goes to the two I'd expect it to go to. Google and You Tube.
I think it's your personal settings that open you up.

So if they started charging a membership fee would all the liberals on this site want a government handout to be able to pay for it?

The site owners should really look into this option, they would make a killing.

ATS is selling us out!
and the gov is keeping a close eye on us.

Them! must keep a close eye on us.
and Take Out any that get to close to the truth.

I don't care either way . I f yo want privacy then use the "Tor" browser
you can set it up so you will never be identified.

www.torproject.org...

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


There should be a pay option for "premium membership" so we don't have to worry about that crap. I'd gladly pay a subscription for the site..

Effectively the cookie is sent to their advert server each time an advert is loaded allowing them to generate a profile of websites that the user is interested in. So after a bit of browsing, say you went to an astronomy forum, and a telescope store which contained the same advertising companies adverts... they will start offering adverts related to telescopes and astronomy.

The same goes for if someone visit's several car manufacturers websites that happen to host adverts from the same advertising server, when you visit a site about gardening you will most probably receive adverts about cars.

It's a dirty tactic.

Not really dirty - it's business. And actually, it's not a bad thing for consumers - you get detailed ads about the things that interest you. You are going to get ads regardless. Wouldn't you rather get ads about the things of interest to you? Wish I could do that with TV.

Of course, there is that whole privacy thing.. but if everyone wants to be honest, they would admit and accept that they have next to no privacy on the Internet.

But people expect something for nothing. The ability to research everything for free. To find detailed maps, sales, phone #'s and addresses, forms, taxes, and everything else.. for free. And they get outraged when people try to make money off of their websites. I don't get why. Nothing is free - and ads and popups (as long as not virus-ridden) seems a small price to pay. People except too much for nothing.

One click, door knock, in jail

So, watch me surf

reply to post by PrecogPsychicSensitive

It would be interesting to see what subjects attract the most attention.And the origin of those most active.

reply to post by PrecogPsychicSensitive
THat figures ATS is all about money nothing wrong with that, that's what make the world go around.
Some of those nag screens they are coming up with are kind of pissing me off.
If it gets too bad, i will just leave and finish filling out my anonymous application

Well, so long ATS! Nice knowing ya!