I’m concerned
throwaway_account_39248 May 07, 2014 12:03

Can Ghostery block Google Maps embeds?

Google Maps embeds now feature a nice photo of whoever's browsing the web page, assuming you're logged in - which means they're getting pretty good at tracking. Can Ghostery do the "click to load" thing on Google Maps embeds?
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  • CHAMP
    Eric P. Scott May 07, 2014 17:52
    No, they're not "getting pretty good at tracking." Signing in to a service like Google, Bing, or Yahoo! is a voluntary act, by which you grant permission to present personalized content. You can revoke that authorization at any time by signing out of your account.



    Google Maps exposes several different APIs. Some of them have access to your session information (Maps JavaScript API v2 and Maps Embed API), while others do not (Maps JavaScript API v3 and Static Maps API). Technically, it's easy to trap instances of the Google Maps Embed API, and doing so won't break anything. However, that's not true for the other integrations.

    I'm going to propose a narrow response,

    Google Maps Embed API

    More info: https://developers.google.com/maps/do...

    Pattern: /www\\.google\\.com\\/maps\\/embed/

    because it's probably the least bad of many poor choices we could make. It's likely to confuse people who won't understand the distinction between this API and the "benign" flavors of Google Maps. On the other hand, we could also be accused of unfairly targeting Google, while looking the other way when their competitors engage in similar behavior.

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    good point! good point! (undo)
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