Who's watching us on Boards?

nate.drake

Just saw this handy infographic from my 'Disconnect' plugin on Firefox:



Do all these websites really have to know we're here? What's wrong with a simple banner ad at the top of the page?

rolion

I guess that explains why the speed is so mad slow.
I have to wait seconds for the page to open and / or scroll up down ! Ads before he text and slow/jumpy autoformatting of the small ad locations.
Tb in rowser crashes and i have to reopen many times.

Crazy price to pay as anend usr for a free access website,i wonder if they can come up with an €xplanation !?

nate.drake

rolion wrote: »

I guess that explains why the speed is so mad slow.
I have to wait seconds for the page to open and / or scroll up down ! Ads before he text and slow/jumpy autoformatting of the small ad locations.
Tb in rowser crashes and i have to reopen many times.

Crazy price to pay as anend usr for a free access website,i wonder if they can come up with an €xplanation !?

I suppose if you use the Ghostery or Disconnect plugin in your browser it's a moot point but it still bugs me. Why not simply display a banner ad at the top of the page - why is it so important that so many websites can track us?

28064212

nate.drake wrote: »

I suppose if you use the Ghostery or Disconnect plugin in your browser it's a moot point but it still bugs me. Why not simply display a banner ad at the top of the page - why is it so important that so many websites can track us?

Because companies pay more money for browsing habits than a banner ad. Not to mention that you can only have a single banner ad per page view, whereas you can load multiple tracking scripts. Also, banner ads are highly visible and interrupt the users' experience, trackers (in principle) have no effect on the experience

nate.drake

28064212 wrote: »

Because companies pay more money for browsing habits than a banner ad. Not to mention that you can only have a single banner ad per page view, whereas you can load multiple tracking scripts. Also, banner ads are highly visible and interrupt the users' experience, trackers (in principle) have no effect on the experience

I just wonder how this info is useful to any marketers in the context of an online forum which offers no actual products for sale AFAIK. I suppose it's academic provided we all have plugins installed to block ads and tracking cookies.

Treepole

nate.drake wrote: »

I just wonder how this info is useful to any marketers in the context of an online forum which offers no actual products for sale AFAIK. I suppose it's academic provided we all have plugins installed to block ads and tracking cookies.

Boards might not have anything for sale (bar your privacy), but it will give marketers a very good idea of your interests.

Manach

There would also be the usual IT security vendor tools that scan and classify Boards URL.

BigEejit

Unfortuantely its just a fact of life now, I have noscript and other privacy tools on all computers in the house. Because websites need to use them to continue operating they are not going away.

h57xiucj2z946q

What a mess the page is.

I use uBlock origin and it blocks out most of the crap. Look at the requests before and after:




Note there is a couple of custom ads on boards.ie that uBlock (and possible Adblock) doesn't pick up. You can block them with the rules:

www.boards.ie##.sponsored-thread.forumlist.tborder
www.boards.ie##.sponsored-content
www.boards.ie##.p2h-orange.p2h-post
www.boards.ie##.top_adslot_wrapper
www.boards.ie##.hidden-print.brds-banner

nate.drake

Thanks bro, this is very helpful, much appreciated!

snipped quote (no need to quote a large image, its not nice for mobile users)

Hotblack Desiato

Legacy Boards site is still perfectly usable with no javascript enabled at all.