[future10se]

As mentioned on the blog post:

> Used as supplied, Google Tag Manager can be blocked by third-party content-blocker extensions. uBlock Origin blocks GTM by default, and some browsers with native content-blocking based on uBO - such as Brave - will block it too.

> Some preds, however, full-on will not take no for an answer, and they use a workaround to circumvent these blocking mechanisms. What they do is transfer Google Tag Manager and its connected analytics to the server side of the Web connection. This trick turns a third-party resource into a first-party resource. Tag Manager itself becomes unblockable. But running GTM on the server does not lay the site admin a golden egg...

By serving the Google Analytics JS from the site's own domain, this makes it harder to block using only DNS. (e.g. Pi-Hole, hosts file, etc.)

One might think "yeah but the google js still has to talk to google domains", but apparently, Google lets you do "server-side" tagging now (e.g. running a google tag manager docker container). This means more (sub)domains to track and block. That said, how many site operators choose to go this far, I don't know.

https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

[whatevertrevor]

Slightly related I've also been recently noticing some sites loading ads pseudo-dynamically from "content-loader" subdomains usually used to serve images. It's obnoxious because blocking that subdomain at the DNS level usually breaks the site.

My current strategy is to fully block the domain if that's the sort of tactic they're willing to use.