Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/08/no-opt-out.html
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I’m glad my main browser is Firefox. There are some features i do like in Chrome but the fact that it’s Google i prefer to relegate it to being a backup browser in case something breaks in Firefox
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Just checked, this is theoretically blocked by uBlock Origin. Not that I wouldn’t put it past google to disallow that blocking.
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I thought Brave was a Chromium browser.
Chrome and IE (when corporations just can’t shake it off) for work. Firefox for play. I love my Firefox.
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Just discovered that websites can disable caching on my back button. It means hitting “Back” can take you to a completely changed page. My wtf moment for the day. I’m getting seriously pissed at how the playing field is tilted so much in corporations favour.
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Go to https://www.privacytools.io/ for info on configuring your browser to maximize privacy.
Warning: some of their settings will break things.
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According to the HTML spec for the ping attribute, browsers should allow control over pings and indicate when they are in use.
Ping is an auditing feature intended to let sites know which of their links are being clicked. You can do the same thing with JS or a redirect, ping is just simpler. Pings are also only supposed to go to the same site, not to a 3rd-party tracker.
The better question is: do Safari, Chrome, Edge, etc… allow cross-site pings? If not, it’s not really a privacy issue.
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Same, IE and Chrome for work and FF for personal.
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Brave is based on Chromium not Firefox
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Also in the specs: “When the ping attribute is present, user agents should clearly indicate to the user that following the hyperlink will also cause secondary requests to be sent in the background, possibly including listing the actual target URLs.” .
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I assume that Duckduckgo’s browser wouldn’t be doing this either since they promise to not track. However, I can’t find anything specific to verify this.
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Where does Opera fall on this…?
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In the same camp as Google and Apple:
Newer versions of Chrome, Safari, and Opera will no longer allow you to disable hyperlink auditing,
We need a Browser Privacy Flag Day, wherein everybody switches to Firefox en masse.
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Worth posting a clarification link on Brave:
/I don’t use this but wanted to clarify what Brave is actually built on.
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I’m curious whether removing the ping attribute from a hyperlink tag after it’s parsed into the DOM would eliminate the pingback behavior. If so, one could use an extension like Tampermonkey to run a quick JavaScript scan that iterates over any <a> tag that contains a ping attribute and remove it.
Obviously it would be better if the browser let the user control this behavior itself, but barring that, there’s ways to regain it. I might do some fiddling with this over lunch today…
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Thanks, fixing.
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Yep, I’m forced to use Chrome for work but when it comes to home or my phone it’s not Chrome (Safari since I’m in iOS land with my iPhone lol). And I love the fact Firefox has extensions to support Gopher and FTP. 
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It’s an absolute fucking joy on my somewhat antiquated Droid, compared to FF or Chrome. i can look at the internet without it breaking and everything.
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What about this - instead of clicking on a hyperlink, copy it. Can you then edit out the “ping” part of the code and use only the part that actually takes you to the specified location?
According to the spec, the ping must follow the same origin rules (in short, the ping must be to the same url in the browser bar).
This is mostly about letting a website owner know what is happening on their site, so they can get data to make improvements, not about letting Google or Facebook track you even more closely.
Does not mean hiding the disable option is not heroically slimy though.
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