Bookmark: "Spying on a website using Webmention and MF2"

2018-01-08

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Spying on a website using Webmention and MF2 marcus-povey.co.uk

Marcus Povey describes why a website should not show webmentions with embedded images from the source site (as it could allow the publisher of the source site to track the audience of the cited site).

This is not Webmention or Indieweb specific, but a general privacy risk: whenever loading resources from a third party, that might enable them to track a user.

(Not mentioned in the post, but the suggested solution of caching the images of course opens yet another can of worms: strictly speaking that might be a copyright infringement, unless the owner of the profile image has consented to it being copied.)

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing together social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

My occasionally sent email newsletter has all of the above, and there is of course also an RSS feed or my Mastodon/Fediverse profile.

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