AddThis by Oracle (addthis.com)
“AddThis is a media web-tracking technology company… The company operates AddThis.com, a social bookmarking service that can be integrated into a website with the use of a web widget.” – Source
Ethical design violations
(Learn more about Ethical Design.)
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tracker
Monetises you.
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web bug
Invisible tracking pixel.
Block rule
Block domain addthis.com
addthis.com
Prevalence
Epidemic: found on 5.5% of surveyed sites (402 instances observed).
Notes
- AddThis was purchased by Oracle Corporation on January 5, 2016.
- “AddThis has been acquired by Oracle and will soon transition to the Oracle Privacy Policy.” Source
- “When you, an End User use one of our buttons, menus and/or toolboxes that is enabled on one of our Publisher websites (an ‘AddThis Button’), we collect certain non-personally identifiable information automatically for use on our platform (the ‘AddThis Platform’). We enable our Publishers to use this information via the Platform for analytics purposes…” Source
- “when you visit a web page that contains one of our AddThis Buttons, our server logs collect your Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time you visited that web page, and (if you came to a web page where an AddThis Button is enabled via a search engine such as Google), the web search that landed you on that web page. We also collect information regarding how often you share content with others using the AddThis platform. We use this information to help us build commercially viable data segments (e.g., travel enthusiast, sports fan) for online ad targeting in order to help make the ads you see on many of the websites you visit more relevant to your interests, and for ad delivery and reporting purposes…” Source
- “We also set Cookies and web beacons on web pages where our AddThis Buttons are enabled, and allow our partners to set Cookies and web beacons that are subject to those partners' privacy statements.” Source
- “The Oracle Marketing Cloud and Oracle Data Cloud services and our customers, data providers and partners use a variety of technologies to collect Marketing Information, including via ‘cookies’, ‘pixel tags’, HTTP headers (or other communication protocols), and mobile signals and identifiers.” Source
- “Oracle creates profiles through the use of cookies, cross-device/cross-context technology (such as statistical IDs), or other unique identifiers provided to us by our customers (such as mobile-advertising IDs)… Oracle analyzes this data to determine if the devices/contexts are likely to be related to a single user. When a probable connection is found, Oracle creates links between the profile IDs and related Interest Data from the different devices/contexts.” Source
About Better
Better is a Safari content blocker for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It protects you from trackers and malvertising by enforcing the principles of Ethical Design.