Ads ≠ Tracking

There are sites that do ads right; I don’t block their ads. Too many sites though tie their ad displays to tracking and analytics and I don’t view them because I block tracking and analytics; the ads are collateral damage in the war for my right to decide when I want to be private and when not.

For example ReadTheDocs (free online documentation hosting) and the DuckDuckGo Search Engine will show ads without tying the ads to analytics and tracking across the internet.

I don’t even object to a degree of local analytics (for example, paying attention to what countries and browsers visitors are using to access one’s site I think makes sense), although adding in (browser) ‘fingerprinting’ I find problematic.

The long and short of is it that I don’t object to advertising per se (although there are some really terrible ads irrespective of tracking and analytics), but to the obscenely excessive collection of data that has become the norm.