284
Audit Finds Google, Microsoft, and Meta Still Tracking Users After Opt-Out - Slashdot
(tech.slashdot.org)
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
284 points (99.3% liked)
Privacy
48300 readers
435 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Opt-out not working ? I'm stunned !! /s
I opted out of using their products
That doesn't actually stop them
It may, if enough people did it. I stopped too.
They need to track you to know you opted out
Article talks about cookies still being set when user opts out of those.
That's bad, sure. But TBH I worry so much more about fingerprinting. Cookies, easy to delete in your browser, easy to block. Fingerprinting is done behind the scenes on the server, you can't block their attempt to. There are "resist fingerprinting" options in some browsers now like firefox, but limited in effect, and much of the fingerpinting is not even something the browser can stop. Things like TLS fingerprints, or exact timings between your system making a request, and the serving system. Or things you can spoof but which cause problems if you do. Even Tor Browser doesn't spoof some of those things b/c it causes problems to do.
The identity broker companies have a massive financial incentive, and they employ very smart data scientists. Even "opting out" of cookies, I think it's about 0% chance we have any way to opt out of these behind the scene techniques they use. They will use every shitty weasely trick in the book like the slimeweasels they are.
Honestly. I think if tracking is disabled it should do the following:
- anything screen dimension related including available height/width -> blocked (realistically java-script should never need to disclose this information outside of an internal function anyway)
- User Agent: generalized (this usually already is the case)
- Cookie status: kept the same as needed for functionality.
- addon/plugin info: blocked
- buildID: blocked
- hardware concurrently: generalized instead of a set number (low end being < 4 middle being < 12 high anything else)
- any hardware characteristics(such as gyro, battery state, etc) -> request for permission by default
Like there are many steps that can be done to help mitigate fingerprinting, its just getting vendors to actually do it.
being said I had never known about the TLS fingerprinting option, I generally don't see that shown on the fingerprint detector sites, that's interesting.
being said I had never known about the TLS fingerprinting option, I generally don’t see that shown on the fingerprint detector sites, that’s interesting.
There's also things like the SNI field which is a non-encrypted field which contains the requested domain name. Even if you use DNS over HTTPS to keep your information from leaking via ISP controlled DNS servers, they can still get the destination domain names from the SNI during the TLS handshake.
its just getting vendors to actually do it.
Good ideas... and yeah... the browser vendors have a financial incentive to build mechanisms to collect anything and everything. Javascript itself exposes so much more fingerprinting possibilies.
That's also why I think it's so terrible for Google's Chrome to have like practically all the market share. G can now drive the whole web in a way that's good for them and bad for us.
More than just opt-out. There is a class action lawsuit presented to U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division on the 23 jan this year saying that [The privacy of] “WhatsApp users’ communications is false. As the whistleblowers here have explained, WhatsApp and Meta store and have unlimited access to WhatsApp encrypted communications, and the process for Meta workers to obtain that access is quite simple” That’s the content of the messages not just the metadata Meta, unsurprisingly, deny the allegations
Google can't track you if you don't have gapps installed.
Also, this is going to be necessary in 2027, so might as well do it now
Lots of sites and Android apps (even the non Google ones) phone home to Google behind the scenes. I'd recommend using a tracker blocker/DNS blocking just to be sure..
Even worse, browser fingerprinting means they can track you even if you have tracker blockers. Your tracker blocker extension just becomes another unique part of your fingerprint.