White House caught secretly tracking Web visitors with sneaky spyware

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For what it’s worth, according to the Privacybadger FAQ, it doesn’t provide any protection against canvas fingerprinting (at least not yet).

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Wow, clickbait anyone? Here’s how the headline should have been written:
White House Web Team Uses Annoying Sharing Tool

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That’s a very amusing list of sites. Mostly people who are in the business of screwing people.

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There is no indication that the White House knew about this function before yesterday’s report.

Jesus, Cory. You know, I agree with you on a lot of things and want to trust you. Why do you lie to me? AddThis was caught tracking, not the White House.

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I use Ghostery (which blocks AddThis). I can’t figure out if that blocks AddThis’s canvas fingerprinting or not. Anyone know? (Googling “ghostery canvas fingerprinting” just gets me various opinions from comment threads, split pretty much 50-50 and with little supporting evidence either way.)

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You can opt out of addthis.com.

And if that doesn’t satiate your paranoid itch, you can always edit your hosts file to have: “127.0.0.1 addthis.com”

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If the White House deliberately put the code on their web page, they’re responsible for what it does when you visit their web page.

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Thanks, Obama.

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I’m guessing Ghostery would work [I use it, and it does a good job of blocking scripts, third-party ads, etc] but I have no way of knowing for sure.

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Okay, Geez. We get it, Cory. Obama let you down. He wasn’t magical after all. Would you rather W/Cheney, McCain/Palin, or Romney/Ryan?

But don’t lie to us & yourself. AddThis is surely bad, but why not rip Pinterest or the other millions (literally) of sites using this crappy tool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AddThis
“In March of 2014, the company was named number one on the Top 30 Syndicated Ad Focus Entities by comScore.”
And what does AddThis really have to do with Obama?

And BTW, we know you’re in love with Snowden. Take him off the pedestal. Far more of his leaks have strategically or militarily helped Russia/China than the few (admirable) true whistle-blower leaks about NSA. Look it up. (Wouldn’t surprise me if in 10 years we find he was a spy all along.) Take the long view.

I’ve always skimmed boingboing to just read your posts, but it’s becoming a bit tedious to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fighting the good fight doesn’t mean developing knee-jerk anti-establishment hysteria. (And that’s Xeni’s job, anyway…)

Bring back the responsible, even-keel Cory that we long for. Rage is awesome when well-aimed. But don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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Wow. Troll much?

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No. This is my first (or second) post anywhere. This is what I think. Your thoughts, albill?

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My thoughts are that it is Cory’s site (along with the other Boing Boing authors) and he can write about whatever he wants. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to read it or keep coming back.

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I also support the First Amendment. Good point. I wonder what these “discussion” pages are for…

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I’m sorry. I’m being a bit nasty, I guess. I kind of attacked Cory a bit and that was wrong. I sent a separate e-mail to him apologizing for that. I guess we only hurt the ones we love.

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I just know AddThis as “that thing in the NoScript list that I have never clicked ‘Allow’ on.”

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