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All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from site

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 4:22 pm
by Shade
Hello Community,

to avoid any problems regarding the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), I decided to make it simple and remove all Google and Facebook related scripts from the site.
This includes social buttons and loaded Google fonts.

If you still see anything loaded from Google or Facebook, please let me know.

Have a nice day! :)

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 6:59 am
by Dr.Flay
I don't know how important this is, but there is still 1 element
google.jpg

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:37 am
by Terraniux
I find this very nice. No facebook and other privacy miners. Thank you shade. :thuup:

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 12:32 pm
by Feralidragon
I am sorry, but if you're truly worried about GDPR, then you ought to do a lot more investigation, because those are the least of your problems in this site.

For instance:
- you didn't update the privacy policy;
- you don't inform that this site uses cookies (although this comes from way before GDPR, but now it will be enforced more aggressively);
- users receive emails from this site by default (under GDPR they shouldn't), and there's no way to disable that fully (you can only disable some specific ones);
- you offer no way for users to download all the data stored about themselves from your database;
- you offer no way for users to delete their own accounts, permanently.

But I don't believe you will have any issues, since only companies and much bigger sites will be targeted, and if you do have, what you just did amounts to almost nothing to be honest with you.
The whole forum software is severely outdated, and while I didn't check it myself, I would guess that newer phpBB versions are GDPR-compliant, so you may want look into that as well.

Furthermore, and also replying to this:
Terraniux wrote:I find this very nice. No facebook and other privacy miners. Thank you shade. :thuup:
Since images from remote sources are allowed, not only can they be used for tracking from those sources, it's easier to track from them since tracker blockers and such won't generally block images from loading (ever heard of a tracking pixel? same thing).

Every time you see a post with remotely-loaded content, you may already being tracked.
I mean, even Higor has a signature that shows your IP and OS, and while this is not necessarily "tracking", it should give you a good idea of what sites may be doing, which only furthers the irrelevance of what Shade just did here, relatively speaking.
The only way to avoid this is to host everything locally.

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:00 pm
by Raynor
Any effort to reduce FB and Google presence is positive in my view. Thanks Shade!

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 7:01 pm
by Higor
Feralidragon wrote:The only way to avoid this is to host everything locally.
In other words the legislators drafting the GDPR had no idea what they were doing.

Still getting rid of Lifelog... err... I mean, F*ceb*ok is good. (let's see who connects the dots)

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:12 am
by papercoffee
Higor wrote: Still getting rid of Lifelog... err... I mean, F*ceb*ok is good. (let's see who connects the dots)
You mean Farcebook? :ironic:
Higor wrote:In other words the legislators drafting the GDPR had no idea what they were doing.
Politicians ...they never know what they are doing.
They live in an ivory tower of ignorance, surrounded by lobbyists and bankers... reality is a fairytale for them.

btw.
The newest EU law "reform of the copyright" is even worse.

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 2:02 am
by DLD-RABBIT
What are the social buttons :barf: Does this include links hosted by Google?

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 7:13 am
by MrLoathsome
Facebook & Twitter = Computing for Idiots.

I approve.

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 12:02 pm
by Feralidragon
Higor wrote:In other words the legislators drafting the GDPR had no idea what they were doing.
When it comes to GDPR itself, it's actually not bad, surprisingly, and it has a good intention behind it, and it does inform and protect the users to some extent on how their data is used.
But yeah, it was legislated by those whose knowledge about how things work start in Google and ends in Facebook and Twitter, that's all they know, but in this case things turned out well, I don't think we can really complain, it's a reasonable set of laws.

The real bad stuff is only starting:
papercoffee wrote:The newest EU law "reform of the copyright" is even worse.
Not only article 11 is laughably easy to get around, it actually kills those it aims to protect if you don't.
But it's up to those affected by it to speak up and make noise, even because they alone have the means to do more noise than everyone else combined.

Article 13 on the other hand shows how dangerous the mix of ignorance with power actually is.
It aims to shift the entire responsibility of content from the content uploaders to the platform itself, by forcing the platforms to prevent copyrighted stuff from being uploaded in the first place.
It essentially means that, in the worst case scenario, even forums cannot exist anymore, because technically one can post copyrighted content in their posts, and you cannot realistically really prevent that without not having the platform in the first place.

It's the first set of laws which may actually kill the Internet completely on the EU side of the world.

Those advocating this law claim that these platforms should have AI to detect these, which shows their complete and utter ignorance about how the technology works, and the fact that not only it doesn't work very well, it's stupidly easy to get around, and there's no better example in the entire web than Youtube itself: they have measures in place to prevent copyrighted videos from the start, however the entire thing is riddled with copyrighted videos anyway, because no matter how good their system is, it cannot effectively prevent those videos.

In other words, article 13 pretty much kills even platforms like Youtube, which already have systems like those in place, and yet they do not work well.

But, the good news is that nothing has been approved yet, only the discussion and voting for it was approved with 15 against 10, so the real thing will start next month I believe and extend for some more months until the end of year until they reach a final consensus, and all it takes is to fail in one of the votings for the entire thing to crumble.
Given that even huge corporations like Google are directly affected by this, this is the time they can actually use their corporative weight, together with others, to thwart the implementation of this law.

Either that, or we may as well shift all hosting to Russia or any other non-EU country, which would be easier and cheaper, unlike GDPR.

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 4:27 pm
by noccer
tbh, i would never have seen such an effect since everything that has to do wit hacebook is blocked per default for me.
ublock Origin and noScript do one part, a looooooooooooong hosts localhosts all facebook-hosts :D

However, i think it is nice to remove all that crap. When setting up a new blog all scripts from other hosts will be removed again. I never needed it and am sure, ut99org also never needed it.
About new copyright law:
I hate it, i am not able to make a new UT file host again, if i ever want it.

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 7:24 pm
by Shade
Cookie Info added. More to come. Thanks for the feedback!

@Dr.Flay I couldn't find the source. Did you delete your cache?

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2018 4:02 pm
by RocketJedi
Feralidragon wrote:
Higor wrote:In other words the legislators drafting the GDPR had no idea what they were doing.
When it comes to GDPR itself, it's actually not bad, surprisingly, and it has a good intention behind it, and it does inform and protect the users to some extent on how their data is used.
But yeah, it was legislated by those whose knowledge about how things work start in Google and ends in Facebook and Twitter, that's all they know, but in this case things turned out well, I don't think we can really complain, it's a reasonable set of laws.

The real bad stuff is only starting:
papercoffee wrote:The newest EU law "reform of the copyright" is even worse.
Not only article 11 is laughably easy to get around, it actually kills those it aims to protect if you don't.
But it's up to those affected by it to speak up and make noise, even because they alone have the means to do more noise than everyone else combined.

Article 13 on the other hand shows how dangerous the mix of ignorance with power actually is.
It aims to shift the entire responsibility of content from the content uploaders to the platform itself, by forcing the platforms to prevent copyrighted stuff from being uploaded in the first place.
It essentially means that, in the worst case scenario, even forums cannot exist anymore, because technically one can post copyrighted content in their posts, and you cannot realistically really prevent that without not having the platform in the first place.

It's the first set of laws which may actually kill the Internet completely on the EU side of the world.

Those advocating this law claim that these platforms should have AI to detect these, which shows their complete and utter ignorance about how the technology works, and the fact that not only it doesn't work very well, it's stupidly easy to get around, and there's no better example in the entire web than Youtube itself: they have measures in place to prevent copyrighted videos from the start, however the entire thing is riddled with copyrighted videos anyway, because no matter how good their system is, it cannot effectively prevent those videos.

In other words, article 13 pretty much kills even platforms like Youtube, which already have systems like those in place, and yet they do not work well.

But, the good news is that nothing has been approved yet, only the discussion and voting for it was approved with 15 against 10, so the real thing will start next month I believe and extend for some more months until the end of year until they reach a final consensus, and all it takes is to fail in one of the votings for the entire thing to crumble.
Given that even huge corporations like Google are directly affected by this, this is the time they can actually use their corporative weight, together with others, to thwart the implementation of this law.

Either that, or we may as well shift all hosting to Russia or any other non-EU country, which would be easier and cheaper, unlike GDPR.
:thuup:

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2018 4:32 pm
by ANUBITEK
Higor wrote:Still getting rid of Lifelog... err... I mean, F*ceb*ok is good. (let's see who connects the dots)
Connected the dots, got two short lines in between text. This connect-the-dots picture sucks dude.

Re: All Google and Facebook related scripts removed from sit

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 12:11 am
by Dr.Flay
I realised my extensions would have been adding extra content, so I disabled everything except ContentBlockHelper and deleted the cookies.
Cleaner result now.
I see Paypal are using a tracking pixel (and I should probably whitelist that cookie notification script)
contents.jpg
As that script at https://cookieinfoscript.com is providing the (required by EU Law) notification about the use of cookies on the site, it may be worth thinking about moving it to this domain, or writing it somewhere in the signup or login page.

People that use script blockers won't see it either way we have it, but we can then say;
"This site does not use trackers or external elements to function."


The new copyright laws will not be as much a problem here I think, at least compared to most other similar forums.
We have a reputation for disapproving of posting anything that may be a copyright problem, and encouraging the use of alternative resources.
Go to other game forums and you will find lots of repackaged music for use in-game.
It doesn't matter what the container is, distributing it is still a crime in most Countries.

Peoples avatars are as likely to attract the copyright police, as the random memes and signatures containing "borrowed" images.
The big patent trolls.... sorry I mean tech companies have already shown how protective they are of their precious emotes, and all manner of stupidness has been dragged into court, with Apple, Samsung, Google and more, all thinking emoticon design is worth copyrighting and suing for mega-bucks.

There will be allowances for journalism and "fair-use", but we can assume that fair-use restrictions will be insane
The BBC has a downloadable show on the world service page where they interview a few people it will affect, such as the web archive
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswhdf