OzBargain Tracking Cookies

hearitfromhorse on 04/05/2022 - 11:37
Last edited 04/05/2022 - 12:36 by 1 other user

Anyone wonder why when you turn on Ghostery and adblocker, OzBargain has a pretty busy back-end (like me on dairy products)?

For the record, my browser says: Ghostery picks up 15 trackers - Adblocker picks up 21 trackers.

Do you lot care? Any good ways of using ad-blockers without sites recognising it?

Poll Options

  • 7
    Doesn't really matter
  • 12
    That's quite surprising - and unnecessary
  • 19
    Stop eating diary products
Site Discussion

Comments

  • askbargain on 04/05/2022 - 11:52
    +1

    Doesn't OzBargain only use Google for tracking? (When ads are turned off anyway)

    • Chandler on 04/05/2022 - 17:02

      On this specific page I'm picking up 2 trackers: cdn.fuseplatform.net and googletagmanager.com

      This is via Privacy Badger and Ublock Origin (Privacy Badger is not picking up the googletagmanager tracker, but possibly because Ublock is blocking it before PB picks it up)

  • barge-in hunter on 04/05/2022 - 11:54
    +1

    This is how any website or app with free content maintains a viable business model.

    They sell data about you either directly (data marketplaces where companies buy/sell/trade data files) or indirectly (provide ad servers enough information to find the "most suitable/highest paying" display ads to show).

    Between 15 and 21 is probably higher than normal, but to be clear - 1 is all it takes for your data insights about your behaviour and personal preferences to be shared across the web

  • Muzeeb on 04/05/2022 - 12:01
    +6

    Stop eating diary products

    There is no nutritional value in paper for humans.

    • brendanm on 04/05/2022 - 12:03

      Dammit, beat me to it.

      • Muzeeb on 04/05/2022 - 12:04

        Are you my wife?

        • brendanm on 04/05/2022 - 12:07

          😂

    • DashCam AKA Rolts on 04/05/2022 - 12:22

      But diary products are a good source of fibre.

  • pegaxs on 04/05/2022 - 13:02
    +4

    You're asking the same people who regularly hand over all their personal data to cashback sites, only to have all that data leaked and then promptly forget all about it once they are offered a $3 gift card.

    • Clear on 04/05/2022 - 13:12
      +2

      I think small businesses offering freebies and being unable to fulfill them when they get tens of thousands of orders is wayyyyy more controversial than that. People got their priorities wrong.

  • freefall101 on 04/05/2022 - 13:31
    +1

    Turn off banner advertisements in settings/profile.

    I have Ghostery blocking 2, Privacy Badger 1 and Adblock Plus 0 on the front page (and this page). Both Privacy Badger and Ghostery are blocking google analytics, Ghostery is allowing through Google Tag Manager.

  • Moderatorscotty on 04/05/2022 - 14:07

    Well. Let me clarify:

    • OzBargain itself uses only 1-2 cookies for tracking — yes we need to know who you are on your subsequent requests, i.e. session keeping stuff.
    • OzBargain also uses Google Analytics for tracking our traffic. We want to know about the number of users, sessions, page views, etc. Sometimes we also use Analytics to track or A/B testing new features.
    • The majority of the cookies you see would be coming from advertisement networks. OzBargain sub-contracted it out to a Sydney company called Publift who runs a header-bidding setup, so that multiple advertisement networks can bid on the ad space on OzBargain. And there are a lot of networks. So the winner would inject their ads on OzBargain, which usually include their own cookies. Plus all the cookies of all the intermediate networks. These are all programmatic — I have no idea which ads are shown, which networks are there, and who are paying us.

    Please note that OzBargain itself does not sell any tracking data. However the advertisement networks (that pay us) might be using the data they have collected (via winning the bid) for other commercial purposes — I would have no idea either.

    If you don't want to be tracked on OzBargain — run adblocker or turn off ads in your user settings. Note that turning off ads in the user settings does not disable Google Analytics. If you absolutely do not want to have any non-first party cookies — use an adblocker that also blocks Analytics.

    • barge-in hunter on 04/05/2022 - 19:39
      +2

      Great clarification, thanks @scotty

  • Some Human on 04/05/2022 - 20:08
    +2

    Cookies, donuts, you name it.

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