Why Does LinusTechTips.com have a "D" Rating from DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials Extension?

[DrEagleTalon]

So I love the community and love all the channels and know they have a business to run so analytics and ads are probably important but just wondering if anyone smarter than me can tell me why they have such a low grade? With Site Protection Turned on its raised to a "B" but I whitelist sites I enjoy, frequent a lot or trust. Just wondering.

[BobVonBob]

Because this site has some very common trackers and the DuckDuckGo extension tanks a site's grade when it finds trackers.

 

As a sidenote, if you're using the DuckDuckGo extension for privacy, why are you disabling it anywhere? It's not like ad blocking where it directly harms revenue, it's to prevent the trackers from following you. Not to mention the people that made the site aren't the ones tracking you, although I don't see why you'd be more okay if it was Linus tracking you instead of Google, it's the companies that made the trackers following you.

[danomicar]

Unfortunately, most websites have trackers. I doubt someone at LMG actually sat down and thought, "Gee, I guess we should add trackers to the forums", it's likely coming from the forum software or the ad platform hooked into the forums. Nothing to be particularly concerned about.

 

That being said, you can definitely feel free to leave the trackers disabled by the duckduckgo extension. 

[Norad]

21 minutes ago, danomicar said:

Unfortunately, most websites have trackers. I doubt someone at LMG actually sat down and thought, "Gee, I guess we should add trackers to the forums", it's likely coming from the forum software or the ad platform hooked into the forums. Nothing to be particularly concerned about.

 

That being said, you can definitely feel free to leave the trackers disabled by the duckduckgo extension. 

Trackers come with Invision Power Services ;)

[Mark Kaine]

10 hours ago, DrEagleTalon said:

So I love the community and love all the channels and know they have a business to run so analytics and ads are probably important but just wondering if anyone smarter than me can tell me why they have such a low grade? With Site Protection Turned on its raised to a "B" but I whitelist sites I enjoy, frequent a lot or trust. Just wondering.

Just curious,  how does it rate Google?

[Jeskspie]

On 9/24/2021 at 5:48 AM, danomicar said:

Unfortunately, most websites have trackers. I doubt someone at LMG actually sat down and thought, "Gee, I guess we should add trackers to the forums", it's likely coming from the forum software or the ad platform hooked into the forums. Nothing to be particularly concerned about.

 

That being said, you can definitely feel free to leave the trackers disabled by the duckduckgo extension. 

Yea I asked the dev, they just use a pre-made forum template and just add LTT styling and custom features, it prolly had it pre-packaged with the template in some .js code for anylitics

[danomicar]

22 hours ago, Arch User said:

Yea I asked the dev, they just use a pre-made forum template and just add LTT styling and custom features, it prolly had it pre-packaged with the template in some .js code for anylitics

That's interesting. In the grand scheme of things it's really not a big deal, but I do think it's a bit of a shame that trackers have become so normalized. 

[DrEagleTalon]

On 9/23/2021 at 11:28 PM, BobVonBob said:

Because this site has some very common trackers and the DuckDuckGo extension tanks a site's grade when it finds trackers.

 

As a sidenote, if you're using the DuckDuckGo extension for privacy, why are you disabling it anywhere? It's not like ad blocking where it directly harms revenue, it's to prevent the trackers from following you. Not to mention the people that made the site aren't the ones tracking you, although I don't see why you'd be more okay if it was Linus tracking you instead of Google, it's the companies that made the trackers following you.

thanks for this info. i was misunderstanding the value of trackers to a website. i work in IT but as a sys admin and development is out of my wheelhouse. so thanks for the info i just watched a video on how it all works.

[Mooshi]

I trust Linus not to drop my data.

[Slayerking92]

The fourms did have a data breach a few years ago

[MultiGamerClub]

1 hour ago, Slayerking92 said:

The fourms did have a data breach a few years ago

Good to know.. or not.

[tkitch]

15 hours ago, Mooshi said:

I trust Linus not to drop my data.

I Trust linus to drop anything placed in his hands.  

 

But since it'd be physical media, we're fine, cuz it'd break