Earlier this week,
ProPublica published a report on AddThis, a browser-based surveillance and tracking tool that the report billed as "virtually impossible to block". Excerpt:
A new, extremely persistent type of online tracking is shadowing
visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.com. First documented in a forthcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven
University in Belgium, this type of tracking, called canvas
fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a
hidden image. Because each computer draws the image slightly
differently, the images can be used to assign each user’s device a
number that uniquely identifies it.
In an update to the piece, it is noted that a number of entities identified in the report as utilizing the spyware contacted the ProPublica to inform them that they had ceased using the tracking tool. Excerpt:
After this article was published, YouPorn contacted us to say it had
removed AddThis technology from its website, saying that the website
was "completely unaware that AddThis contained a tracking software that
had the potential to jeopardize the privacy of our users." A spokeswoman
for the German digital marketer Ligatus also said that is no longer
running its test of canvas fingerprinting, and that it has no plans to
use it in the future.
If only the professional political prostitutes in government took privacy that seriously.
We need to remove browser based spyware leads but the detail is also here. We all think that pro report is telling us the bestessays information about those things which we need but sometime the virus attack on those things which is not good for us.
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