Visiting a site that uses Disqus when not logged in sends URL to Facebook

I wish all website would wait for the user to turn on social features before offering them. I&#x27;m not interested in any of them, the scripts shouldn&#x27;t be loaded for nothing.<p>Take a look at this way to do it: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;panzi.github.io&#x2F;SocialSharePrivacy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;panzi.github.io&#x2F;SocialSharePrivacy&#x2F;</a>

This tracking stuff is a plaque and I&#x27;m part of the problem. I run an unpopular site with random bits of information on it that uses AdSense to give me a few bucks a month and Disqus to allow comments.<p>Uhg. I really need to think about whether I want to be part of the problem.

As mentioned in the article there was a related discussion yesterday, where removal of ad network stuff doesn&#x27;t <i>really</i> matter since Disqus is used for comments:<p><i>I&#x27;ve removed all ad network code from my blog (troyhunt.com)</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13326792" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13326792</a><p>This included a screenshot of DoubleClick still being blocked on Troy Hunt&#x27;s blog.

I&#x27;m reviving my blog, and currently plan to explicitly ask:<p>1. May we retrieve common libraries from third party CDNs? Doing so helps support this site by saving on our bandwidth costs, but may expose information about you to those third parties.<p>2. This site allows commenting through Disqus. We have no control over what Disqus does with your data, and so your information may be exposed to Disqus and any third parties they communicate with. Would you like to enable comments?<p>3. (Similar for tracking, if I decide to do something other than log parsing.)<p>Default &#x27;no&#x27; to all, and I still need to find a way to ask the questions in a way that doesn&#x27;t disrupt simply viewing a blog post that someone linked. Perhaps if someone returns, I&#x27;ll prompt then.<p>Anyone have thoughts on if this sounds sane?

I&#x27;m working on an alternative to Disqus called Remarkbox - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remarkbox.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remarkbox.com</a><p>One of my early design decisions is to be as lightweight and fast as possible. This means no oauth, no ads, and only core features that you would expect to find in a comment system.

Just a note ...<p>It is <i>possible</i> for someone to say &quot;hugs&quot;[1] at the end of their discourse and still be a <i>liar and a cheat and a terribly bad actor</i>.<p>No idea, of course, about any of these people - but don&#x27;t let cost-free, content-free expressions alter your (bullshit&#x2F;fraud) detector.<p>[1] See comment on OPs blog from &quot;disqus here&quot;

PrivacyBadger blocked his Disqus embed. I think a good test of whether your site&#x2F;blog is privacy conscious is to see if PrviacyBadger reports any tracker.

FWIW - Disqus commented on my article - there&#x27;s a link to their comment right at the top of the article now.

I noticed the same thing about a week ago when I was setting up comments for my blog [1]. I hate bloated websites, so I copied the Disqus markup and opened up Chrome dev tools, and saw the Facebook URL along with dozens of other resources being loaded.<p>I ended up researching WAY too many comment systems, and eventually settled on Reddit. Not ideal, but better than all the alternatives.<p>Blog commenting is pretty broken right now, I guess due to the dominance of social networks. I wanted to write my own blog comment service in rage but thought better of it.<p>Disqus seems pretty sloppy. I was surprised to learn that they were an early YC company.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oilshell.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;29.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oilshell.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;29.html</a>

Ugh, thanks for this. I&#x27;ve made it a goal to start understanding all the little tricks and details of modern day tracking techniques that allow Facebook, Amazon, etc., to know everything that I do. Anyone know if there&#x27;s a good one-stop-shop website for this topic? I&#x27;ve found lots of separate articles about the it but no central clearinghouse of information.

Some years ago I looked at Facebook&#x27;s ToS for implementing &quot;log in with Facebook&quot; and at that time it looked like it precluded an implementation that would only send requests to Facebook if the user chose Facebook login. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s for sure that disqus could fix this problem if they wanted to.

&gt; Troy cited tracking as one of the reasons for removing ads<p>Ads should be loaded into &lt;iframe sandbox referrerpolicy=&quot;no-referrer&quot;&gt;<p>It would still give them some information (affiliate ID and user IP) but no cookies or tracking of user interaction with the page itself.

Today Disqus deployed a fix for this issue; you can read their comment on the blog posts here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dantup.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;visiting-a-site-that-uses-disqus-comments-when-not-logged-in-sends-the-url-to-facebook&#x2F;#comment-3091263180" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.dantup.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;visiting-a-site-that-uses-di...</a>

It&#x27;s an unfortunate reality. Once Amazon figures out who you are, they send a feed of everything to you at or buy to FB.

I think Ghostery stops this.

&gt;I’m certain Disqus could fix this,<p>most likely they are getting paid for this tracking