Google and Facebook Might Be Tracking Your Porn History, Researchers Warn (cnet.com) 161
Researchers at Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania analyzed 22,484 porn sites and found that 93% leak user data to a third party. Normally, for extra protection when surfing the web, a user might turn to incognito mode. But, the researchers said, incognito mode only ensures that your browsing history is not stored on your computer. CNET reports: According to a study released Monday, Google was the No. 1 third-party company. The research found that Google, or one of its subsidiaries like the advertising platform DoubleClick, had trackers on 74% of the pornography sites examined. Facebook had trackers on 10% of the sites. "In the U.S., many advertising and video hosting platforms forbid 'adult' content. For example, Google's YouTube is the largest video host in the world, but does not allow pornography," the researchers wrote. "However, Google has no policies forbidding websites from using their code hosting (Google APIs) or audience measurement tools (Google Analytics). Thus, Google refuses to host porn, but has no limits on observing the porn consumption of users, often without their knowledge."
Just like Jimmy Swaggart (Score:5, Funny)
Google likes to watch.
I'm liking this new Microsoft (Score:1)
They seem very pro-porn these days. Combine this story with the fact that Bing with the safety off is the greatest porn search engine ever invented, it might make up for all the shenanigans they pulled over the last 25 years...
Re:I'm liking this new Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
This just in: Twitter is also one of the biggest porn sites in the world if you turn off the safeties.
("Settings->Privacy and Safety->Hide sensitive content...")
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Tweets with teats, eh?
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The ghost of Tumblr is laughing at your tiny toy sites.
Re:I'm liking this new Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
They seem very pro-porn these days. Combine this story with the fact that Bing with the safety off is the greatest porn search engine ever invented, it might make up for all the shenanigans they pulled over the last 25 years...
Calling an internet search engine "pro-porn" is like calling an automotive repair shop "pro-car". Porn is part of the DNA of the internet. Every online search engine is "pro-porn" if they're functioning even half right.
Seems we forgot what justified the massive expansion of internet back in the early days. It sure as hell wasn't social media or Netflix driving bandwidth needs.
Ob Avenue Q (Score:4, Funny)
Calling an internet search engine "pro-porn" is like calling an automotive repair shop "pro-car". Porn is part of the DNA of the internet. Every online search engine is "pro-porn" if they're functioning even half right.
Seems we forgot what justified the massive expansion of internet back in the early days.
Ob. Avenue Q ref. [youtu.be]
(And double "irony points", because hosted on a service belonging to Google)
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That's fine - even preferred to me. Type the words. That gives me an easier way to search for things when I don't want porn.
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That's fine - even preferred to me. Type the words. That gives me an easier way to search for things when I don't want porn.
It's not fine by me. Google used to be the best search engine. Now it increasingly delivers subpar results returning what it thinks I should want while ignoring my explicit search terms. This does not necessarily include porn either.
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It sounds like your search terms were specifically not explicit, or at least had non-explicit results. Some of us use Google for actual work at work and what's on the screen matters. I don't want to drop Google for that.
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It's not porn that is the issue, it's spam. And it just so happens that porn sites and spam go cock in hand.
Some search engines only seem anti-porn because they down-rank all spammy porn sites. Google also hates paywalls so many official porn sites get low rankings too.
Re: I'm liking this new Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Google has a hard time parting with money. They hardly pay any taxes, paywalls are a PITA to them and they also donâ(TM)t pay their users for the data they share with them.
Re: I'm liking this new Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
I generally agree with their down-ranking of paywall sites. When I google for something I want the answer, not an invitation to pay for what might possibly be the answer. I also don't want the site serving up different content to the googlebot so they get more clicks under false pretences.
Paywalls are fine if that's what the site wants, just don't expect to be in my search results.
Re:I'm liking this new Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
What? You mean waiting a few minutes while you zmodem a jpeg off of a BBS wasn’t fast enough for everyone? Hell porn is what obliterated the whole betamax / vhs struggle for dominance. I have no doubt it will be the driving force behind the next information jump. Its only a matter of time before some MMO, fully immersive VR, full feedback bodysuit platform that takes the idea of tinder, without the risks, hits the market.
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full feedback bodysuit
I just really hope it's self-cleaning.
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.... Love ...
the kind you cleanup
With a mop and bucket
Like the lost catacombs of Egypt
Only god knows where we stuck it
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Ah, the days of watching the progressive loading JPEG slowly slide into view.
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I have no doubt it will be the driving force behind the next information jump.
And you'd be wrong. The porn industry was a heavy backer of the HD-DVD format.
That said despite their failure there they are still a big entertainment driver. Let's face it 99.9% of 5.7K and 8K media produced right now is porn.
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I remember going to the base club for Monday Night Football on the east coast. 7pm. Watch a game, have some beer, crash and get up for muster the next morning. Got stationed on the west coast and suddenly its at 4pm.... watch a game, have some beer, suddenly its only around 7-8pm, the night is still young and you're half drunk wanting to go out and do something. It was definitely a different time back then.
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I've realized what a terrible substitute porn is for a good old fashioned, clean fantasy. .... I'll imagine my future wife, and determine how I'll please her ...
Do you realise that you future wife will be nothing like you imagine ?
Re:Have at it (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn *is* fantasy. It is not real sex, just like romantic plots are not real romance, and action movies are not real fighting. These are works of fiction for your enjoyment, not documentaries.
As for the shady aspects, sure, I suppose it happens in porn more often than in other movies. But if you worry about that you can stick to reputable studios, some of them are quite open about the way they operate. It is not so different from any product, if you want to avoid supporting child labor, conflict minerals, blood diamonds, animal abuse, etc... do your research and don't support companies that engage in such activities.
I remember an article about Kink.com, a large studio specializing in BDSM. Well paid actresses, very professional staff, they even offered tours of their studio. I won't go as far as saying that working for them is a dream job. Some of the staff and cast sometimes have valid complaints, like with any job, but that's as far as you can get from the fantasy they depict.
As for being lame actors, that's your call, but know that there is work involved in what they do. You can find "revenge porn" online that depicts genuine sex acts, and not only it is highly immoral, it is also pretty boring. What makes porn exciting is the result of hard work by the people involved, and that includes "amateur porn". Also, how can you tell how good they are as lovers just by looking at how they *act* in front of the camera, it is like saying that actors playing villains are assholes in real life.
Oh and it is totally fine not to like porn. And if fantasying about your future wife is what gets you off, that's really great. But I really think porn deserves more recognition.
Re:Have at it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll add that there was a behind the scenes documentary made about Kink entitled (ingeniously) Kink with interviews with cast and crew about what they do and how they feel about it. Many professed to be fine about it, but one interview that stuck with me was with a woman who was asked if she would want her daughter to have her job, and she started to cry. I think Kink.com does care about it's actors to perhaps the best extent possible, but the people who can have sex on camera for a living have a different compartmentalization mechanism than most of us. I know I couldn't do it, and that's speaking from experience - I was offered a role in a porn film in college which I turned down.
Re:Have at it (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is people fail to understand that it is fantasy. While most of us know in an action movie that a bullet to the arm is just something that the hero can just walk off. In real life most people wouldn't be able to deal with the pain, and wouldn't be functional for a while, as this would be a serious injury. Heck if I have a Pimple in the wrong spot it takes a lot out of me to function.
For Porn, the idea of a consequence free sex and/or extreme body types is something that is obtainable. Then we get frustrated because real relationships take a lot of work, and there are things beyond just physical attraction which is needed. Also being that sex is a natural instinct it is something most of us aspire to do and redo. So the fantasy of porn seems more obtainable then fantasy of violence. Because we are forgetting this fantasy, we seem to feel frustrated that the real relationship we have that they don't meet this fictional body image and personality.
Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Is anybody really not blocking doubleclick and google analytics by default?
I'm not (Score:1)
I set my DNS to 8.8.8.8. I figure by sending Google all my traffic instead, they'll be hard pressed to sort through and discern the porn from the non-porn.
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DNS isn't quite as revealing as javascript embedded in all the web pages you view.
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Re:I'm not (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh noes, I created a Google account, accepted the terms and conditions, accepted the privacy policy that said they would collect some data about me, and now they have some data about me!
I'm more worried about Facebook shadow profiles.
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Think about all the bad users you've encountered. All the computers you've fixed where they had 300 pop-ups at boot. Now think of the proportion of those users you've known to the proportion of knowledgeable computer users.
Now extrapolate.
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> Is anybody really not blocking doubleclick and google analytics by default?
How would that make any difference?
It is not "doubleclick and google analytics". It is Google Hosted Libraries, Microsoft Ajax CDN, CDNJS (Cloudflare), jQuery CDN (MaxCDN), jsDelivr (MaxCDN), AngularJS, Backbone.js, Dojo, Ember.js, Ext Core, jQuery, jQuery UI, Modernizr, MooTools, Prototype, Scriptaculous, SWFObject, Underscore.js,Web Font Loader, ..... Google Chrome, Google DNS, Android, iOS, Windows.....
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Such might be an opportunity of education for them (Score:2)
when i google for big cock tranny (Score:1)
i really mean a large rooster's automatic transmission
No, Google Doesn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked at google on display ads (i.e. their non-search ads) I can assure you they are very careful NOT to track this kind of potentially sensitive information. It was a big pain in the ass dealing with just how *OVERPROTECTIVE* they were in what they labeled as sensitive. They even made sure that information that suggested you might have purchased a valentine's day gift wasn't used to target ads.
I mean I can't guarantee for sure there isn't info in their database somewhere that would let someone reconstruct this information if they really tried. It's surprisingly hard to go delete all the information from server logs that would let one deanonymize information if you did enough correlations but that's going to be true anytime anyone serves ads.
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Doesn't that mean that they effectively DO track your porn history, just to make sure they do not use it for their ad suggestions? I mean, you can't make sure you're not using some specific information if you don't know what it is... (Well, you sort-of can, but it's extremely complicated with scientific papers on the subject starting to appear in the last few year, so it's dubious it's already in production)
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Depends on what you mean by track. I mean anytime you visit any site with an ad every ad network serving that page has a record on their webserver somewhere for a period of time (and I just don't know if and when they scrub PII) but I would call tracking doing the actual mapreduce that accumulates that data so you can draw inferences about someone.
I mean think of it this way. Do government employees track you on most of your trips out of the house? I suspect you would say no but as it's true that 30% of
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How about private browsing/incognito mode? Is that an effective way to separate stuff you don't want associated with you?
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That's what I'm asking, do they make that link up? GP seems to have knowledge of this.
I don't have an IP address, BTW.
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I don't have an IP address, BTW.
If you are online, you have an IP.
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I use someone else's.
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A VPN doesn't protect you from browser fingerprinting, which is a lot more specific than an IP address.
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They don't kill the Goose. (Score:2)
Yeah, they don't want to advertise based on your porn, because that would finally drive home how invasive they are. Note, you said you couldn't use the information to target ads. You also said they didn't track it, but I have no reason to believe that's what you meant as opposed to didn't use it to target ads (which you also said and seems more realistic.).
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Yeah, they don't want to advertise based on your porn, because that would finally drive home how invasive they are.
I'm having a problem knowing how they'd target ads based on your porn. OK. I like seeing black MILFs with big tits. So what would they advertise? Big tit black MILF escorts? Can't think of much else that would be useful, based on what floats your boat.
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Not tracking porn site info for ad use makes no difference and you know it. How about Google Hosted Libraries, Microsoft Ajax CDN, CDNJS (Cloudflare), jQuery CDN (MaxCDN), jsDelivr (MaxCDN), AngularJS, Backbone.js, Dojo, Ember.js, Ext Core, jQuery, jQuery UI, Modernizr, MooTools, Prototype, Scriptaculous, SWFObject, Underscore.js,, Web Font Loader? Does no one collect stats from those? How about Google Chrome and Google DNS? Everyone of those collect data and you know it.
OMG! (Score:1)
What if they out me as a completely boring person! That would be the end of me!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: I got an email about that (Score:5, Funny)
I also got that email and I was curious to what my friends would say about the movies they got of me watching porn. So I didnâ(TM)t pay and waited anxiously. It has been quite a few months now and Iâ(TM)m still waiting. Customes service is not what it used to be.
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The one I got said I had good taste in porn, so I knew they were lying.
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The one I got said I had good taste in porn, so I knew they were lying.
Maybe they are into the same weird kink you are.
Re:I got an email about that (Score:5, Funny)
I have also received this email. I asked for them to send me the video because I wanted to add it to my collection, but they never got back to me. )o:
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One of my Directors got that email too. He seemed VERY concerned. So I told him not to worry, just give me the $5000 in cash I would handle the matter for him "discreetly"
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an email about having been hacked and they knew that I watched porn and they used my camera to film me spaning the monkey. I had to pay some Bitcoins. .... I did yet they did not send me the film ..
That must be the video clip I got sent by mistake.
incognito plus umatrix plus host file (Score:3)
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don't care (Score:2)
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If they take cues from Microsoft they would just ignore hosts and use hardcoded IPs for that.
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You go to a porn site, the porn site sends a fairly unique watermark of your browser to google along with good description of your requested content. You cannot do anything against that other than not going to said porn site.
i would have to ask why bother putting so much effort into trying to break my privacy, when i obviously dont want to see their products.
Additional data. They use it to profile you, see how much you are similar to other users and improve their profile based on your data. Maybe they want to see the ads.
Let's have a toy example: I have seen movies A, B and C, while you have seen movies A, B and D. Based on that, there's a
And that would correspond only to that site (Score:2)
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>incognito plus umatrix plus host file
Congratulations. You are now 100% identifiable via browser fingerprinting.
Google Definitely Are (Score:2)
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I clicked on that link, but it wanted me to "Sign in". I don't have an account with any search engine. Why would anyone want to do that?
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Since when does "better" mean "remove ads so they can sell their own"? Just like Adblock plus whitelists and Apples ad-shit.
Have at it... (Score:1)
Everyone is tracked (Score:1)
I would think by now the porn surfers would know not to use a typical browser even in private or incognito. You would need at least a VPN or use Tor browser to hide your trail. Especially in Europe where you need to prove your old enough to look at it. Google sadly has become the whore for your information.
Of course they do (Score:4, Informative)
This is Google and Facebook, the biggest data glutton in the world. Of course they track and store everything they can collect about you.
Anyone who thought otherwise, well, I have nice bridge to sell you.
Aaaand... (Score:1)
They all went blind.
blackmail (Score:1)
is it just me or does it seem like Google is building a blackmail operation that would make J Edger Hoover look like a choir boy?
Good (Score:2)
jokes on them (Score:2)
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This is what I like about being an older guy. I could give two shits about who knows what I spank it to these days.
Better browsers (Score:1)
yes. simply. yes. (Score:3)
1. Hello user. We're providing this internet site for free. Since you're not a paying customer, you have no customer rights.
2. We're gonna harvest every iota of your data and do whatever we want with it.
3. We can make whatever privacy rules we want, and ignore or violate them at will.
4. We won't tell you when we decide to ignore our own rules. See point 1.
5. We will will tell you that we care about your privacy. We don't. See point 1.
6. We're a company that makes most of our money by selling adds, but we also sell your data on the side.
7. We won't voluntarily do anything that gets in the way of selling ads or data. To anyone. Don't like it? See point 1.
That's the Facebook or Google TOS. The extra text is random chatter. I'm not really mad about this. Capitalism, baby. But let's be honest about what these companies really are: they make money through a combination of selling adds and selling data. The social networking or search engine things are really just honeypots for those activities. They're not gonna do ANYTHING that gets in the way of those things, unless compelled by laws that are enforced with huge fines and/or prison sentences for executives.
Obligatory Monty Python reference (Score:2)
How much and what? (Score:2)
This is a terrible title (Score:2)
FTFY: Google and Facebook Might Be^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Are Definitely Tracking Your Porn History
Why would you think any differently unless you'd completely ignored the last 10 years?