InformAction Forums

I've use NoScript for several yrs. The number of trackers on typical pages has grown exponentially.
Is there any way to speed up determining which trackers control what on individual pages, as they change from month to month? Whether on the 1st or nth time you visit a site? The base domain appended with "cdn" is easy enough. Some trackers you learn aren't required. It occurs that the constant changing could partly be intended to make using NoScript & other extensions a nuisance, so more users will stop using them.

On many pages, the trackers providing a specific feature or content changes often. It changes from month to month on several sites, which tracker controls what - it becomes a perpetual guessing game.

Even if they don't continually change on site A, the specific content or features controlled by say, the same tag manager, may not control the same things on site B. It's highly variable from site to site. At times, some sites - like big news media sites won't work in Firefox even if all trackers are allowed in NS, cookies are allowed & no other privacy or security extensions are active.

You can allow trackers one by one or possibly view the page source - for a hint on which tracker is associated with specific content you're interested in. Either method is very time consuming.
Or temporarily allow all on a page - not the best idea on untrusted sites. Doing technical research & visiting dozens of unknown sites, these methods become unacceptably slow.

Incidentally, I join others that complain about this forum's software spam filter being hay wire - giving the message, "Ooops, something in your posting triggered my antispam filter." On this post, after long time trying to find the issue, I think it was just mentioning names of common trackers in my post. Not in ads or spam like way.

This is precisely the reason we have surrogate script. Please report such incidences here: viewforum.php?f=26
Be sure to include the exact URL to the site and the tracker domain(s) required. Make sure to read this viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19930 first to check if there should be an existing surrogate working.

Also, viewtopic.php?p=75314#p75314

I appreciate that. It'll be useful.

But I'm afraid you misunderstood (or I was unclear).
I wasn't asking about doing the equivalent of what surrogate rules do.
I meant is there a quicker way to figure out which scripts control what, on a given page / site, on any given day?

Partly because, on xyz.com, scripts from tracker.com provide a certain function or content.
While on 321.com, very similar features (certain buttons, menus, etc.) and / or very similar content is provided by a different - URscrewed.com.
It's sometimes impossible to tell which one controls what, other than allowing them one by one, or turning all on. And next month on 321.com, many of the trackers may change.
And there are often many trackers - to try & figure out which ones controls what.

So, when you go to new sites you can't tell which of the tracking domains control what. Unless you're very familiar w/ what a specific tracker usually provides.
There may be 15 trackers - some you've seen, some not. And the tracker that last month controlled say, the filtering system for product searches on a site , may be controlled by a different tracker next month.

In these cases, it's not a matter of whitelisting a particular tracker (or having surrogate script) on a given site. Partly because the trackers required on a given site (for what I want to work) change quite often.

scripteze wrote:I meant is there a quicker way to figure out which scripts control what, on a given page / site, on any given day?

Nope, sorry, it really doesn't get much quicker than this method viewtopic.php?p=75314#p75314. It might get faster in some cases if you happen to be familiar with what a tracker provides, look through the JS errors the site generates, and get a bit lucky. But that's really about it.