What are analytics APIs accessing when they run, and how do you block or spoof t
ID: 657042 • Letter: W
Question
What are analytics APIs accessing when they run, and how do you block or spoof them?
Usually all apps from desktop or mobile app stores, MMO clients, Steam and many utilities, and many games and tools which use Java in the browser record substantial system data. How does an analytics imbed get access to data such as what version your processor or quartz clock time are (where is this information stored on Windows for example), and how would you even begin to block or return false answers to these kinds of requests? Are there any projects you know of? I know of Permissions Denied on Android but what about Windows or OSX?
Explanation / Answer
This very much depends on where the application is running, as code running in different environments will have different levels of access to system information.
Browser Analytics have access to a relatively standard set of the information provided by the browser. The easiest/best way to block these is to use browser privacy plugins like ghostery which block the trackers access to their destination servers.
If the analytics software is running as native code on a windows/OSX machine then the information it can gather is only really going to be limited by the rights of the user, so pretty much everything on the system. In those cases you could run a firewall that can block requests by process, to prevent them "phoning home"