OM NOM MON NOM, address et D.O.B: Twitter lets admen chomp users' cookies Twitter is now allowing sinister admen to drill into its users' cookies so they can better target them with marketing campaigns by tracking their actions around the web. The loss-making company, which floated itself on to Wall Street last month, first began testing the contentious technology in the summer during the build up …
I use RequestPolicy and Ghostery to stop lots of third-party sites, but I was thinking what we really need is a browser with complete isolation based on the first-party site. So, without any RequestPolicy/Ghostery blocking, the browser would never send the same cookies back to a third-party when visiting a different first-party site.
So user goes to example1.com, which has third-party stuff from adshit.com ... adshit.com sets a cookie, but the browser stores this in the example1.com isolated storage.
When the user then goes to example2.com, which also has adshit.com, then the cookie won't be sent because it's not in the example2.com isolated storage. A new cookie will be set by adshit.com and the browser will store in example2.com
Only when the user goes back to example1.com , will the original cookie be sent to adshit.com
So, without any RequestPolicy/Ghostery blocking, the browser would never send the same cookies back to a third-party when visiting a different first-party site.
You have been able to do this in lots of browsers but you end up having to switch it off or okay cookies on a case-by-case basis in order not to lose functionality because lots of sites use third-party cookies for fairly innocuous things.
You're best off with Ghostery/NoScript enabling certain third-parties on a site-by-site basis.
What it needs is a significant number of users who are prepared to clamp down on third-party cookie usage even if it means they no longer visit certain sites because they don't work. If the primary users see a drop in traffic then one would hope that they'd redesign their sites to work properly without all the extraneous cookies. I delete my cookies fairly regularly anyway.
As for sponsored tweets, I work on the principle that if I see one of them, the sponsor goes on my shit list and I don't buy what they're pushing.
I absolutely hate the term revenue product. It's fucking stupid. It takes the reason for a business to exist and gives it secondary status. I've heard that term at least a dozen times this year and it's always from somebody that isn't making any money.
I'll be glad when this second bubble is done and regular business can resume.
On Android, the latest Twitter App update requires permission to "read phone status and identity" (includes reading your phone number and the number of any phone you are connected to during a call) and to "receive test messges" which allows it to read or delete SMS messages even without you seeing them.
Anyone know a good Twitter client for Android that doesn't have such nosy permissions?
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