Blocking fetchback tracking..

[luntrus]

Hi Giorgio Maone,

Well we all know here that we are being tracked all the while by stealth hidden ways e.g. via webbugs even after we have left the website in question (for instance take the so-called Fido server "fetchback"tracking). Interesting discussions to block them are to be found here: https://nodpi.org/forum/index.php/topic,673.0.html
An example for you. A controversial US online advertising company has turned to agency support to launch its services in the UK.
NebuAd analyses the websites people visit, so that it can deliver online advertising based on their interests.
Re the FAQ: http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html

It means that the ads people encounter on the web can change according to previous websites they have visited....thats just it - they will be sending out adverts on post data "after the fact" that means after you already done what you wanted to do, so they be coming in last - not very good, is it? The real losers will be the companies that paid them for the ad to be served and us. the browser user, as our data will be sold on. So the fetchback tracker is the only party to get wiser from the deal and companies and users both loose out. You certainly do like or need to block such a tracker, won't you? These practices go hand in hand with tracking on parked websites for instance (tracking cookies).

Is it true that we can block this fetchback tracking by just generally blocking webbugs with the specific setting option in NoScript via :Options-Advanced, Forbid "Web Bugs"?
As there are also ways of fetchback tracking via iFrame which drops several cookies, then we have to block iFrames as well?

luntrus

[al_9x]

"web bug" in NS has a very specific meaning: images inside <noscript> tags shown for blocked scripts. An image outside that context could still function as a web bug but not be blocked. I have suggested making it possible to create a generic abe rule to block all/some third-party sub-requests to untrusted domains. With such a rule you'd be able to block web bugs (images) by marking their domain untrusted. Until then you can block web bugs with 1) abe rules 2) request policy extension 3) hosts file 4) local/router firewalls

As for Fetchback, which is not really a generic technique, but a specific ad company, if their site is any indication, they do their tracking with iframes (pixel.fetchbakc.com, fido.fetchback.com). NS can already block them: block iframes, mark fetchback untrusted and set "no placeholders from untrusted." If you want to be sure, find a customer of theirs.

[Faxanadu]

These may fit your needs as well:

Ghostery extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609/
Beeftaco extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/180650/
Adblock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/
Karma Blocker: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5230/