In accordance with this topic I have started to compile a list of filters that are simply unsuitable for EasyList or EasyPrivacy as they cause too many false positives. A post with this content will later be set as a sticky in the public forums. Thus far I have collected the following filters:
In addition, adult websites are not explicitly dealt with in EasyList or EasyPrivacy. If you wish to block adverts on such sites, try Fanboy's Adult/Dating subscription.
If anyone has more submissions I would be grateful for any suggestions. I will update this post as appropriate.
Last edited by MichaelVerified on Sat Nov 28, 2009 9:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
There are still two filters which contain the webtrends substring and some which could be related to webtrends (e.g. /analytics/wt.js). Are these oversights or were they left in EP on purpose?
Presumably there have been no false positives reported as a result of those filters, and therefore they remain. It is only intended that this list will act as a notice advising that we do not want any more scripts in that category.
probably isn't tracking at all, so I don't think it belongs to that list. Also I only found foresee here: http://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?t=4685 but as the topic is yet unanswered, I don't know how this one got into the list.
At a guess, foresee was probably just one of several filters I dumped in the topic because they were in my personal filters, although I am sure that I saw something about it negatively impacting on one website.
I included google.com/jsapi just for the sake of completion as I understood the task was simply listing filters that would not be suitable regardless of the subject matter.
Finally, I don't know how I forgot to mention that EasyList is for English languages websites only. Talk about missing the obvious...
I'd like to propose the following addition to the sticky:
About Google Analytics and the other unblocked scripts:
Google Analytics (from here on abbreviated as GA) is likely the most used tracking software on the Internet right now and the lack of a filter for blocking the google-analytics.com domain has caused some concern among users of EasyPrivacy in the past. To understand what impact the decision to refrain from blocking GA directly has on Internet privacy, the following circumstances have to be taken into account:
1.) GA does not track you across domains. Each site creates a different unique ID to recognize your Firefox installation.
2.) GA uses first party cookies for tracking. Since all major browsers forbid that domain "foo" has access to cookies from domain "bar" for security reasons GA has to use a trick to transmit the information stored in the cookies of domain "foo" to google-analytics.com for further processing. The Google-provided script on domain "foo" tries to load a small image (called __utm.gif) from Google servers and attaches all relevant information (your user ID, session ID, etc.) as parameters to the image (the part after the '?' character).
EasyPrivacy does block __utm.gif and therefore also the information that is transmitted alongside it. Your browser may store GA cookies but without the possibility to load __utm.gif your presence is still hidden from GA.
The other unblocked scripts are also "first party" tracking scripts. They are able to monitor your activity on domain "foo" but not on domain "bar". The privacy leak therefore is manageable.
Any additions? Corrections? I've read that it *is* possible to track someone across domains with GA with some kind of cross authentication but I left out on purpose as this is not a problem on the same scale as, for instance, being tracked by DoubleClick across the Internet which does not require any kind special provisions.
Last edited by Erunno on Sun Nov 29, 2009 2:25 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Looks good Erunno; I'm sure that it will help many people understand our stand on Google Analytics. My only minor suggestion would be to put the names of filters in bold to differentiate them from the rest of the text.
I'd definitely recommend __utm.gif and I'd probably leave it at that. It's all really about personal style, but looking at the forums it seems that filters are generally indicated as being separate from any surrounding text. In this instance, bold text appears to be the most obvious answer.
In this case it's just an imge. I don't think blocking it would cause issues. I would suggest to add /googleanalytics/ga.php?$image to the general EP list.