[tor-talk] Tor and Google error / CAPTCHAs.

[Joe Btfsplk]

On 10/3/2016 2:09 AM, Alec Muffett wrote:
> On 3 October 2016 at 01:40, <bancfc at openmailbox.org> wrote:
>
> While outreach and cooperation with some companies may work, do you not
>> consider that a sizable number of sites will always block anonymous traffic
>> simply because they can not monetize it with targeted ads?
>
>
> Ah! That delightful old argument.
>
> I've heard it a lot, and I am afraid that it is all of groundless,
> incorrect and demonstrably silly.  :-)
>
>
> In three bullets:
>
> 1) If less than 0.1% of the people who use your site do so "anonymously",
> the amount of ad-revenue associated with them is negligible. There are
> bigger leaks to plug.
Possibly partly true, but I consider other reasons that sites 
(essentially) block users, sometimes lumped with Tor users.
"You can't use our site unless you allow cookies"  WTH - Really? Why is 
that?  Could it be that certain tracking - not just on that domain - 
won't work unless cookies are allowed?
"You're using  ad blocking software.  Our site won't work correctly, if 
at all."  [see #3 below]
On many sites, Tor is lumped together with ad and script blocking 
browsers - unprofitable and often largely untrackable.  We're no longer 
talking about a tiny % of users.
>
> 2) In my experience the "blocking" that companies do to Tor (and similar)
> is 100% grounded in the threats from spam, scraping, testing phished
> credentials, and other forms of bad behaviour.
Are you saying that TBB is the only browser used for malicious purposes? 
:)  That other browsers can't be or aren't adapted by skilled users for 
similar malicious or unwanted behavior?
I don't really buy that.  For one thing, it's too slow.  Even using a 
plain browser with a proxy - which I rarely do - I'm seldom blocked.  
Disregarding financial sites.  But Tor is blocked all the time on these 
same sites.  They don't say you're blocked, you just can't get in or use 
the site - even with scripts allowed.  I can use many federal govt sites 
just fine with TBB, but I can't do a Google search?  Talk about scraping!
>
> 3) I would bet a substantial amount of beer that anonymous proxy networks
> are negligible threats to advertising revenue in comparison to "People on
> the Clearnet who use AdBlock+".
I can't speak for everyone, but if ads were - still - presented as just 
ads, and trackers weren't trying to record everything you do across the 
entire internet, sell that data, provide it to the govt - on request, 
for a fee, then I wouldn't mind allowing small ads.  WAY back in the 
day, I'd click on some ads of free sites that I wanted to support.  That 
was way before things got to present practices. Now, there's no way I'll 
let them record every move.  My medical issues, political interests, 
legal matters...