Prevent Cross-Site Tracking

I finally figured out what was preventing me liking other people’s WordPress.com posts or commenting on them.

Well not exactly preventing me doing that, because I could go into the WP Reader and click ‘like’ from there. And if I clicked on the ‘W’ in the comments section on the person’s blog it would allow me to be recognised as me (as in, me on WP.com) in order to comment (but not to ‘like’)

What would happen normally is that when I tried to click ‘like’, a little box would appear superimposed over the site and it would do a little drum roll as thought it was going to link to the site below, and then…. nothing.

One other niggle is that when I clicked to look at who had commented on my posts, as often as not one of the tabs – the ‘Unread’ tab for example, would spin and spin but not show the content.

I noticed it might be particular to this machine because of what happened when I was using our MacBook Air, in the living room. The Air is the machine we use when travelling (not much of that on the horizon). And with that machine there was no problem.

So I just went into Safari / Preferences / and then under ‘Privacy’ I unchecked ‘Prevent cross-site tracking’ – and it worked.

Then I checked ‘Prevent cross-site tracking’ again – because after all, who wants cross-site tracking?

What Is Cross-Site Tracking

Cross-site tracking is when you go to a site and there’s an advertisement for the thing you looked at on another site. The king of the ‘we’ll follow you everywhere we can’ sites I go to at the moment is a second-hand camera site that I visit sometimes.

I Could Be Wrong

Of course, I could be wrong about this, and if you know better – please comment because having to deal with it by checking and unchecking is painful (a little bit painful – not a big deal).