26 Mar 2017 Search

(Update: Removed some obsolete material. This check is harder now because of AI scraper bots. More soon.)

This is a brand new blog, so I’m setting up the basics. I just realized that I got the whole thing working without a single script, image, or HTML table. (These kids today have it easy, with their media queries and CSS Grid and stuff.)

One big question that I’m wondering about is: how many of the people who visit here are using some kind of protection from third-party tracking? Third-party tracking has been an unfixed vulnerability in web browsers for a long time. Check out the Unofficial Cookie FAQ from 1997. Third-party cookies are in there…and we’re still dealing with the third-party tracking problem?

In order to see how bad the problem is on this site, I’m going to set up a little bit of first-party data collection to measure people’s vulnerability to third-party data collection.

The three parts of that big question are:

  • Does first-party JavaScript load and run?

  • Does third-party JavaScript (from a site on popular filter lists) load and run?

  • Can a third-party tracker see state from other sites?

Step one: add an image and two scripts to the page footer