Neowin trackers and 3rd party cookies

[Xilo]

Quote

Who is peeking over your shoulder while you work, watch videos, learn, explore, and shop on the internet? Enter the address of any website, and Blacklight will scan it and reveal the specific user-tracking technologies on the site—and who’s getting your data. You may be surprised at what you learn.

 

https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=www.neowin.net

 

Quote

21 Ad trackers found on this site.This is triple the average of seven that we found on popular sites.

49 Third-party cookies were found.This is more than the average of three that we found on popular sites.

 

This is ridiculous guys. This is just more fuel for ad blocking this site.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Xilo

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

Xilo - can you add some comments or context in addition to your link?

[Xilo]

2 minutes ago, Jason S. said:

Xilo - can you add some comments or context in addition to your link?

Yes, and click the link.

[cork1958]

I always block third party cookies in any browser I use. I do have neowin added to my trusted sites in ublock origin and it's the ONLY site I do that with. They have to make money some how.

 

Never heard of that site you linked to, but will have to use it to check out other sites.

[indospot Veteran]

I don't know what they consider a "popular" website, but I tested a handful of other tech websites I'd consider popular, and they all have the same or more ad trackers (though some have fewer cookies). Either way, I'm not sure this is a completely reliable tool.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Let's compare it to another popular tech site

 

 

To be fair lets compare it to another tech website like Neowin

 

 

So the question remains, what sites are doing "3x less" trackers? We also have a fully configurable opt in/out for cookies privacy at the bottom right of the page.

 

Fact remains, people aren't running this website out of their own pockets we rely on advertising, and yes we also rely on Google analytics so we don't have to spend money on resource intensive things like webalizer and such like, we even offset the site staff email to GSuite so we don't have to run an email server.

 

Last comparison:

 

 

Even the mighty BBC is comparable to ours.

 

I also want to add that "popular" sites like facebook and google do not rely on 3rd party advertisers at all.. but that still does not mean your browsing with them is private.. so factor that in with the comparisons as well.

[Xilo]

4 minutes ago, indospot said:

I don't know what they consider a "popular" website, but I tested a handful of other tech websites I'd consider popular, and they all have the same or more ad trackers (though some have fewer cookies). Either way, I'm not sure this is a completely reliable tool.

I tested several popular gaming websites. Destructoid for instance has 0 ad trackers, and only 3 third party cookies.

Just now, Steven P. said:

Let's compare it to another popular tech site

 

 

To be fairlets compare it to another tech website like Neowin

 

 

So the question remains, what sites are doing "3x less" trackers? We also have a fully configurable opt in/out for cookies privacy at the bottom right of the page.

 

Fact remains, people aren't running this website out of their own pockets we rely on advertising, and yes we also rely on Google analytics so we don't have to spend money on resource intensive things like webalizer and such like, we even offset the site staff email to GSuite so we don't have to run an email server.

 

Last comparison:

 

 

Even the mighty BBC is comparable to ours.

 

 

Just because other tech sites have the same problem, doesn't mean your site should. This is average across all sites people have submitted. If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?

[Steven P. Administrators]

 

2 minutes ago, Xilo said:

I tested several popular gaming websites. Destructoid for instance has 0 ad trackers, and only 3 third party cookies.

Just because other tech sites have the same problem, doesn't mean your site should. This is average across all sites people have submitted. If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?

Can you tell me how I would otherwise pay for the running costs then? Would you be prepared to buy an ad free subscription, like so many others aren't?

 

I think if we're along the same lines as the BBC which is part publically funded and also under UK government scrutiny, I sdon't think we look bad at all compared to windowscentral, which has 3x more advertiser tracking cookies and double the amount of trackers.

[Steven P. Administrators]

I changed the misleading title, but I consider this topic asked and answered.

 

For openness I saved what the title used to be which was very misleading and untrue compared to our own sector of websites.

 

[spikey_richie]

You may have just guilt-tripped me into a sub @Steven P.

[spikey_richie]

Don't spend it all at once!

[Xilo]

1 minute ago, Steven P. said:

 

Can you tell me how I would otherwise pay for the running costs then? Would you be prepared to buy an ad free subscription, like so many others aren't?

If you've struggled with the same problem for years, maybe it's time to rethink what you're doing? Getting rid of all the political BS would be a good start.

 

News sites are the worst for trackers and cookies though.

[Steven P. Administrators]

3 minutes ago, spikey_richie said:

You may have just guilt-tripped me into a sub @Steven P.

Well to be honest not ad blocking is just as good

 

I feel like if a person is posting about the amount of third party advertiser cookies then they are already blocking them and just posting this to justify their position, when what we are doing is actually perfectly normal across the web.

 

The Privacy tool isn't there for nothing, it serves a function too.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

My own site rates similar to Neowin and I'm mainly using Google Analytics, Google AdSense and Skimlinks. Compared to some sites in 2020 I think that's quite acceptable.

 

Its a double edged sword unfortunately, I can't say i'm 100% ok with the amount of data the likes of Google track. However the trade off is this allows many sites / communities to become self sufficient and freely available for anyone to access.

[shockz]

Do you see the data collected by third party? Or is it just sent over without any additional review?

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

28 minutes ago, shockz said:

Do you see the data collected by third party? Or is it just sent over without any additional review?

I'm not sure how we can review all the data that's sent over. 

 

If you're curious as to the information collected, you can check it all out in the privacy options 😊

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

Something must be wrong with that site because Google, Facebook and Twitter are suspiciously low to zero trackers or third party cookies. I find THAT hard to believe.

[spaceelf]

2 hours ago, Steven P. said:

like so many others aren't?

I forgot that was even a thing.

[Steven P. Administrators]

42 minutes ago, Biscuits Brown said:

Something must be wrong with that site because Google, Facebook and Twitter are suspiciously low to zero trackers or third party cookies. I find THAT hard to believe.

I think you'll find that the larger website won't have to rely on 3rd party services at all, if anything they are collecting the data themselves and then selling it to 3rd parties, and no I'm not being paranoid, that's exactly what companies like Facebook and Google are there for, data collection.

 

Part of the concern by the OP is actually the sort of data it sells like web analytics, it is free to Neowin so long as we're okay with Google using the data themselves such as where the hit came from, how many pages were hit, etc exactly the same data as webalizer would collect locally but nowadays you can't even get approved to review hardware without sharing some traffic data.

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

48 minutes ago, Steven P. said:

I think you'll find that the larger website won't have to rely on 3rd party services at all, if anything they are collecting the data themselves and then selling it to 3rd parties, and no I'm not being paranoid, that's exactly what companies like Facebook and Google are there for, data collection.

 

Part of the concern by the OP is actually the sort of data it sells like web analytics, it is free to Neowin so long as we're okay with Google using the data themselves such as where the hit came from, how many pages were hit, etc exactly the same data as webalizer would collect locally but nowadays you can't even get approved to review hardware without sharing some traffic data.

I don't know. Microsoft, Oracle and CNN were loaded with trackers and 3rd party cookies and I'd consider them 'larger' sites.  Still think somethings off if Facebook.com has zero trackers and on 3rd party cookie. 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

11 minutes ago, Biscuits Brown said:

I don't know. Microsoft, Oracle and CNN were loaded with trackers and 3rd party cookies and I'd consider them 'larger' sites.  Still think somethings off if Facebook.com has zero trackers and on 3rd party cookie. 

it probably can't detect the trackers and such from Facebook because you have to be logged in for them to be active.

[shockz]

3 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

it probably can't detect the trackers and such from Facebook because you have to be logged in for them to be active.

It does track without a login. It's one of the central complaints about Facebook trackers. Anytime you see a Facebook share or like button on a site, or a pixel embed, it's tracking that user, whether or not they even use Facebook or not. 

[jnelsoninjax]

I think that everyone is overlooking one simple thing: anywhere you go, you are tracked by something, a cookie, a script, etc. If you don't like it, don't visit the site, I think that it is fairly simple. Neowin has been a site I have used for years, and I do not worry about being tracked, why should I? I'm not doing anything illicit or illegal, so why do I care if a site can tell what I was looking at, what are they going to do with the data, besides the fact that the amount of data that a website would receive in 24 hours would be allot! I really doubt that the website owners/operators have the time to sift through all the collected data!

[Brandon H Supervisor]

16 hours ago, shockz said:

It does track without a login. It's one of the central complaints about Facebook trackers. Anytime you see a Facebook share or like button on a site, or a pixel embed, it's tracking that user, whether or not they even use Facebook or not. 

I'm just talking about the facebook.com main page though; I doubt there are trackers/ad-cookies on the login page which is where that scanner would be probing. That's just my thought on why it "appears" to be so low according to that scanner site.

 

I don't disagree with you about facebook's trackers on other sites, they're worse than Google IMO with the amount of tracking they do. Heck I'd take Chinese tracking over Facebook's lol

[+Edouard Subscriber²]

On 27/10/2020 at 03:22, Xilo said:

If you've struggled with the same problem for years, maybe it's time to rethink what you're doing? Getting rid of all the political BS would be a good start.

 

News sites are the worst for trackers and cookies though.

Not everyone feels that way with the political topics. They are also only available to members and even then people aren't forced to read those threads.

 

I pay for a subscription due to those topics and the funny pictures threads. I doubt I would pay just for the tech articles as Neowin doesn't offer anything that several other tech sites don't offer.

The forums with the various and wide ranging topics are what makes this place worthwhile for me. Just my opinion.